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lighting matches just to swallow up the flame
Sabine had a Minor Crest of Charon, and this made her very special.
It changed little of the day-to-day: she wasn’t going to inherit very much, as that privilege would go to her second-cousin Cassandra or perhaps (because Cassandra’s temperament was always a little off ), her second-cousin Tybault. But when she turned twenty, and her parents started helping her look for marriage prospects, they told her quite often what a prize she was. Sabine had a Minor Crest of Charon, and this made her very special, because it drastically increased the pool of men she could potentially marry. She had already decided that knighthood was not her path, nor was teaching – but she liked politics and management, and so marrying a very powerful man was presumably the easiest path forward.
The young Margrave Matthias Raoul Gautier once had a reputation as a lively and over-friendly man, but now people likened him to a ghost ship on the Whitehorn. He had lost his wife in the previous winter’s Sreng raids, and it was said she had been pregnant with their second child. Their first was a precious little thing: he ran in circles around the servants and nurses meant to keep him in check. Crown Prince Lambert was desperately fond of him. Sometimes the young Margrave looked at his son with a look of such pride and affection; other times there was a haunting in his gaze.
Sabine found him handsome enough, especially when he looked at his son. More importantly, he was the third-most powerful noble in Faerghus. So when she was introduced, she asked for a dance.
“Your boy is a delight,” said Sabine, when he granted it to her. “His name is Miklan, right?”
“Yes. Miklan Anschutz.” That was about all he said.
He was trying, but he was also dying; Sabine could see that very well. Sociability was not coming easily to him, though she knew from hearsay that he hadn’t always been that way. When he was chatting with the Crown Prince and the Duke Fraldarius, or when he was pulled onto the dance floor by one of his cousins, he tried to smile and seem sociable. The gossip came to Sabine’s ears easily, as it usually did: he needed a wife, that was what he was here for. He needed a wife in a way that not many nobles of his standing did.
“Why is he having difficulty?” Sabine asked her older sister Dianna, who had always known everything about everyone. “Gautier is one of the most prestigious territories in the Kingdom, and he isn’t terribly unlikable.”
“Well, he’s still very much grieving for his previous wife,” Dianna explained. “And Gautier’s prestigious, yes, but it also is a desolate place to live, and the Margravine has a great deal of responsibility over winter food and medicine distribution. A deeply uncomfortable station and a loveless marriage, plus a step-son from a wife he still mourns…”
The explanations were strong, and Sabine understood, but nonetheless, she didn’t quite understand why these factors drove women away. The Margrave was handsome. He was on the taller side, broad-shouldered, maintained himself well. His amber eyes were enthralling, baleful one moment and affectionate the next; all the while he carried himself with care and control.
Sabine was unabashedly curious. She seated herself as close to the young Margrave as she could, and she requested other dances with him, never asking him to open up too quickly. After a few days of successful conversations, she strategically let herself intercept the path of the tiny redheaded toddler that always seemed to end up wherever he would get in the most trouble. It was a game: Miklan giggled apologies, she ended up agreeing to take him off Duke Fraldarius’s hands, and an hour later, Miklan was asleep in Sabine’s arms, as though they were the best of friends.
After the party began winding down, the Margrave Gautier came to collect his son and sighed in what almost could have been relief when he saw her.
“I owe you a great debt, freeing him up from Rodrigue as you did,” said Matthias, sitting down with a sigh of exhaustion upon the bench next to her. “I never should have agreed to bring him to these events.”
“Yes, a toddler does make an odd addition to Fhirdiad’s summer dinner parties,” laughed Sabine. “I assume His Highness convinced you?”
Matthias sighed in an obvious confirmation. “It seemed easier to let him tag along than it is.”
They sat quietly for a while. Sabine’s arms did ache, but she wasn’t entirely opposed to having Miklan in her lap. He was a precious child, round pink cheeks and a desire to hold everyone’s hand. Currently he had both of Sabine’s index fingers wrapped in both of his palms.
“So,” said Matthias. “Did you scoop him up because of an overwhelming love for children, was it a happy accident, or were you looking for an excuse to talk to me?”
He was not, to be clear, flirting. He may have been, in another world, but there was hard calculation in Matthias’s face. Sabine let him see her own calculation, too.
“A little of the first and a little of the last,” said Sabine. “He’s an energetic boy. I can see why His Highness likes him.” She shifted Miklan slightly. “I bet he likes the attention of so many people. Ladies especially.”
Perhaps her calculations were off, or perhaps she’d pushed too far, because immediately, he stiffened. “Sabine. You understand why I am here. I understand why you are here. Let’s cut to the chase.”
“I understand why you’re having trouble in the marriage department,” said Sabine lightly. “Most ladies do like to be wooed.”
“You’re smart, Sabine. If you were in the inheriting line of House Charon, you’d be a force to be reckoned with. You know that I’m not exactly the romantic type.”
Anymore. Arabella Gautier née Fenja hung around Matthias like fog; she was in every silence, her ghostly touch sliding through the gaps between his fingers, her destroyed future lingering in every shadow of his eyes. Sabine had never met the late Margravine, but she’d seen the wedding dress. Already she could imagine herself in one just like it.
Sabine dipped her head. “Alright. Say what you will, then.”
“The position of Margravine is difficult. It requires constant travel and constant work. All summer, I will be visiting the forts on the border. All winter, the Margravine will be responsible for food and medicine procurement and distribution. His Majesty often summons me to Fhirdiad for my insight, and Prince Lambert will be much the same, when he ascends.”
Little tremors ran up and down Sabine’s arms and legs, though that may have been in part due to the sleeping child putting pressure on her nerves. His Majesty. Crest or no, with her non-inheriting line of Charon, she’d have to be very lucky to get so close to the king or the Crown Prince.
“Gautier is cold and dark and desolate. And our responsibility is war.”
“There are easier ways to say you don’t like me,” teased Sabine.
“I think you’re clever and capable of great things,” said Matthias. “My son took to you instantly.” He met her eyes then, hard and serious. “And you have a Minor Crest of Charon. But you need to know the thing you are flirting with is not exactly a fantasy.” He paused, but Sabine could tell he wasn’t finished. After a long silence, Matthias said, “I cannot give you love.”
“I’m not looking for love,” said Sabine. “I’m looking for something to do with my life that feels purposeful.” When Matthias raised an eyebrow, she said, “I want influence. I want to rule.”
“Hm.”
“You need a Margravine,” said Sabine. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be at these parties.”
“And you are at these parties for a life partner, aren’t you?” asked Matthias. “You would really be willing to toss your chances at romance away for an unglamorous position and a man who doesn’t love you?”
“And an extremely cute toddler,” said Sabine. “And the trust of the future king, and the ability to influence policy and assist Faerghus’s people and do something other than just sit in a room as a trophy for some man who claims to adore my every move.” Out of breath, she had to pause for a moment to collect her thoughts. “I know that I am beautiful. But I won’t be a flower left to wilt away.”
When Matthias continued hesitating, she said, “I’m not asking you to marry me right here and now. You’re higher-ranked: it is your prerogative. But consider it.”
They spent those weeks in Fhirdiad semi-flirting, getting to know each other slowly; Sabine laughed at jokes that weren’t funny and made sure to meet Matthias’s eyes constantly to remind him of her intent. They were not flirting for the sake of a romance. Rather, they had a game of power to play, a game of overtures and control and eventually demands. At the end of the circuit, Matthias came to her ring-in-hand and Miklan on one hip. He took her hand, letting her know that the ring was there, that the offer was there, but she could also deny it. “Are you certain this is what you want with your life?”
Sabine looked at Miklan and brushed a little bit of hair from his eyes, earning a curious look and then toddler fingers clinging to her. “I am happy to give my life to something so bright.” Taking the ring from his hand, she leaned in to kiss Matthias’s cheek. “I want you to make me a Margravine,” she whispered.
He whispered back: “And I want you to make me a child with a Crest. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Sabine loved children, and his first child was beautiful. A child with a Crest seemed like a small price to pay.
***
They were engaged in the summer and wed in the fall. She wore a cream-colored dress dipped in navy, with bolts of lilac and periwinkle stitching shooting like lightning up her ribs and spine and stomach. Lace detailing crept over her hips, visually sheathing her in ice. The dress’s neckline was jagged and asymmetrical, designed to match the landscape of the mountains in the distance. Her sleeves almost draped to the ground, delicate lilac and golden curls twisting into the shapes of snowflakes. Crystalline jewelry dazzled over her shoulders and connected the back of the dress to a multi-tiered choker. She became a Margravine in the most stunning dress she could imagine, and all her family came to Gautier for the first (and last) time.
“You look like a beacon at the top of Fort Laich,” said Matthias, as he picked the crystal pins out of her hair and watched her long hair tumble around her shoulders. “Both a warning and a relief, depending on who is looking.”
Sabine found her new husband, whose robes of navy, violet, and gold reminded her of heat lightning, more attractive than he’d ever been. “You’re looking. What do you see?”
Matthias measured her, frowning slightly, but not out of sadness. Rather, he was forming an evaluation.
“A promise,” he finally settled upon. “Of a prosperous future.”
He was kind sometimes. He chose his words with the precision of a man who knew what it meant to be in love, even if he wasn’t with her. Their entire marriage was a deal, its consummation no different. When he kissed her, it was precise and practiced. Matthias did not touch her with need because he desired her so desperately it consumed him; his need stemmed from something horrible and locked away within him. Sabine knew all of this. She touched him in return as though he were power incarnate, as though he were the influence and recognition she so craved, and it became enough.
***
The duty of the Margravine Gautier began that winter. For a period of two moons, stretching from the middle days of the Ethereal Moon and ending in Pegasus Moon, they traveled the territory together. She learned the economy of the small towns and took dinners with the generals stationed in Gautier’s fortresses. They traveled to Fhirdiad and to the ports along the Whitehorn, negotiating as best they could for additional resources, medicines, foods. Finally, finally Sabine found her stride — she could do this well. Matthias told her as much, and sometimes he’d grin unabashed at her, as though she genuinely delighted him.
It was cold. That part, she did not like so much. They spent two weeks traveling the northernmost part of Gautier territory, the flat tundra known as the Pyrs, which only had a few scattered towns. Each had a representative called a Kite who hosted them and guided them around and carried messages to the semi-nomadic ice-fishing communities that skirted the coastline.
It was in the Pyrs that Arabella Gautier née Fenja started to make herself known. The townspeople asked after Arabella, confused when Sabine said yes, she was the Margravine, but no, she didn’t know healing magic very well. Apparently, according to a couple of the Kites, Arabella had been an exceptional healer. Sabine had magic, but hers had always burned. Sometimes children delighted when she could stoke the fires in their hearths a bit larger, but that was most of the positivity she received.
Asking Matthias — why didn’t you tell me Arabella was a healer, that I would be constantly compared to her, and that I would always come up lacking? — barely crossed her mind. Asking Matthias about Arabella always led to his worst moods. When he was upset about something, he retreated inwards; even in their few months of marriage, Sabine had noticed that all she had to do was mention Arabella off-hand for him to ignore her for several hours, if not longer. A handy trick — but not when she was out in the middle of nowhere with him.
They walked across an ice field, out on a rare hike with no destination, as it was one of the only pleasant days they’d received — pleasant , meaning, it was darkly overcast and so cold that tears froze on Sabine’s eyelashes, but they could still go outside. Sunny days always turned dark when Sabine wanted to celebrate them, so a moderately decent day was the closest thing to a pleasant experience they could count on. Still, it was so cold that after half an hour, Sabine whipped off a glove. She cast a Fire spell into the base of her palms, letting it hover there.
“Careful, now.” Matthias stepped close, putting his palm beneath hers, and encouraging her to close her hand to extinguish the spell. “Out here, if it gets too hot, the ice will start to melt, and then the ground will be in-traversable.”
Sabine reluctantly pulled on her glove again. “Very well.”
Matthias took her hands in his and brought them to his lips, breathing softly into her palms. “If you’re cold, let’s head back, and I will do my best to warm you up.”
Sabine’s heart stuttered, and she couldn’t help but smile. They had moments like this, where Matthias’s eyes twinkled with genuine playfulness, when he held her hands because he wanted to. When they returned to their guesthouse and tumbled into bed, it felt like an actual romance. Sabine did desire her husband, quite a bit; he was well-built, strong, generally attentive to her needs. Generally speaking, he was a good lover, a delightful one most of the time, and sometimes when they collapsed into each other, Sabine squeezed herself around the middle in excitement and thought surely, that was the time we made a child. Perhaps they were becoming friends — carnally intimate friends, yes — but friends nonetheless. Between the constant work he provided and his relatively consistent libido, he made it difficult to feel lonely, and she was so relieved.
She was even more relieved, though, when she returned to Gautier Castle, where Miklan flew into her arms and cried, “I missed you, Mother.”
It was the first time Miklan had called her Mother.
Matthias spent a very long time locked in his library that night and departed for Fhirdiad sometime in the middle of the night. Sabine only saw him two weeks later, when he’d banished the worst of Arabella’s haunting and returned to her, renewed and desiring. He was strange, but she could handle a strange husband, considering he gave her plenty of chances to make decisions and the power to save lives.
And, of course, he gave her the chance to be a mother, and Goddess above, did she love her son.
***
In Fhirdiad the following summer, Sabine, as the Margravine Gautier, was invited to sit with the Crown Prince and his wife and the Duke Fraldarius and his wife; she got to be looked at as a beautiful, desirable woman; she got to be powerful and glorious. She got to speak in private settings with the king and queen. She got to dance with Prince Lambert.
“Has Matthias been good to you?” Lambert was a clumsy dancer, but Matthias had warned her of that fact, so Sabine was prepared. “You can tell me honestly. I’ll fix his behavior right up.”
“I have no complaints,” said Sabine.
Lambert tilted his head, evaluating, hoping. He tentatively asked, “he’s…still not over Arabella’s death, is he?”
Sabine laughed lightly, though internally, she felt a bit like she’d swallowed a needle. Arabella, Arabella. It was easy to forget that she was Matthias’s second wife when they were in public, and then someone would say Arabella , and she would simply wither away. She didn’t like to be jealous. She had never asked Matthias to love her, and he had warned her right away.
It was just frustrating sometimes: it had been a full year, he still actively chose to love a ghost over his wife, and everyone around them knew it.
“From what I understand of the way he loved her, he never will be,” said Sabine. “It’s alright, Your Highness, I knew what I was getting into. Matthias has a right to his grief, and I never needed him to abandon his feelings just for mine.”
Lambert’s face fell. “I see. You are…still working towards a child, I assume?”
“Yes,” said Sabine with a laugh, “and if you stopped calling my husband to Fhirdiad so often, perhaps we’d make better progress. Kidding, of course.” She could still tell that there was a sadness, a worry, to Lambert’s features. “We’re in no rush. We have Miklan.”
Lambert was no Matthias — he could not wear calculation well. Instead, he just looked at her with a little bit of worry. Which was when Sabine realized that there was something Matthias had not told her.
“Is something the matter, your Highness?” asked Sabine carefully. “The look on your face suggests I’ve said something surprising.”
“Ah — I…no! Of course not.” Lambert laughed nervously. “I just imagined — you are such a good mother to Miklan, I’d thought maybe — you wanted…”
“To carry a child? I would, but…it does not need to be now.” Sabine shrugged.
“I suppose not,” agreed Lambert tentatively.
At the first moment she had, Sabine yanked her husband away from the festivities. “Matthias, why does Prince Lambert seem to think we are in a desperate rush to have a child?”
Matthias said, “because we are. I told you when we got engaged, I wanted a child with a Crest. We have relatively constantly attempted to create a child since we were married. I understand these things do not happen quickly, but it is not for lack of trying.”
Sabine blinked slowly, running her hands down Matthias’s chest to the buttons on his vest. “Matthias… why is it, exactly, that I need to have a child as quickly as possible? I’m in no way opposed, but I didn’t think you were talking to Prince Lambert about it, and it worries me to know that you were.”
Matthias had always been honest with her: this time was no exception. “Lambert will not support an invasion of Sreng until I have a Crested heir. Someone who can pick up the Lance should the worst happen, and I fall.”
Sabine’s mouth opened slightly in shock.
“It is Lambert’s way of getting out of his promise to me,” said Matthias. “He does not want to escalate matters with Sreng. But he promised me revenge.”
Matthias was starting to have particular expressions that Sabine could read and slot under an entire Arabella category. Each one was like a burning brilliant storm of emotion in the subtle shift of amber eyes and the tightest locking of his jaw. This one looked like his eyebrows furrowing slightly and him just suddenly focusing on the tip of Sabine’s nose — but it meant, loosely: THEY KILLED MY WIFE SHE WAS WONDER INCARNATE AND THEY BROKE HER, THEY SNATCHED THE SUN FROM THE SKY AND THREW IT BLEEDING INTO THE SNOW, I WILL BE THE HAND OF DEATH AROUND THEIR THROATS, THEY WILL FREEZE AS I HAVE BEEN FROZEN, IN SUFFERING DARKNESS.
Sabine took her hands off her husband before she could catch cold. “I see.”
Matthias refocused on her. “Lambert thinks that having a child is some great miracle. That it will somehow bring us together in a way that distracts me. He’s a naive fool — it’s just bodies.”
“Well,” said Sabine. “I’m doing my best.”
For some reason, Matthias kissed her cheek. “I know you are.”
It’s just bodies, Sabine thought to herself that evening, as Matthias slept next to her, and his seed dripped between her thighs. She stared at the ceiling, rotating her wedding ring slowly around her finger. He was right, in some way. They were just bodies coming together. They weren’t in love, after all, and she’d never been promised love. She’d been promised power. The right to dance with future kings and receive tribute from small towns in the north. She had those things. She had more, even — she had a beautiful little boy who called her Mother.
She turned over, wiping a tear from her cheek. Sabine Rosalind Gautier née Charon had not cried because of her marriage yet, but now she did, and she did so silently. She did not quite know what exactly hurt her so deeply about the idea of Matthias fucking her — just fucking her — so he could use her body to create his revenge. Why did that matter? His body and Arabella’s had created the light of Sabine’s life. So why did it hurt so much that he wanted just her body to create a light of war?
***
In the next two years of their marriage, Sabine became pregnant four times. Perhaps it was because she struggled so deeply and lost so much that she started to feel so lonely.
Her first miscarriage happened in the summer — Matthias was on the border, and Sabine kept it quiet, because it had been early, she knew enough about childbirth to know that things were difficult early on, and though she mourned she tried to keep her spirits up. The second happened in the winter, when they were in the fishing village of Essui, and this time she cried out of grief but more importantly fury, because perhaps if it had not been so fucking cold she would have fared better.
The third was in the spring, and it was then Sabine realized why everything in her ached more deeply. She had written to her mother and her father, written to her siblings, written to her cousins and friends, and none of them had expressed an interest in coming to Gautier to visit her. They invited her to Charon constantly, but otherwise it was excuses or offers to meet her in Fhirdiad or Fraldarius.
Her fourth was another summer miscarriage, meaning Matthias was at the Northern Bridge, a day's ride away. Again, Sabine didn’t write to her husband. She just simmered in the memory of her healers’ disappointment as they told her again that there was no heartbeat to be found. Sabine was still slightly bloated from the beginning stages of pregnancy and eternally nauseous. She felt numb. It was odd, to think about — there was a dead thing inside of her, a pea-sized potential shriveled up. A son, perhaps, or a daughter, or a child of some other understanding of self. She would not care, really. But instead it was dead. Was she the broken one? Was there something toxic inside of her that killed anything that tried to live, like the deserts of their northern enemies?
“Sabine.”
Sabine looked up — she was sitting on the steps between their quarters and the back gardens. It was a very unbecoming position for a Margravine to hunch over on steps and peer through the bars of the railing, but it was a good spot for watching Miklan practice with his sword instructor without catching any attention. Her mouth opened slightly in surprise when she found Matthias only a few paces away and walking closer, leaving his gauntlets on the table that sat beside their balcony.
“What are you doing here?” Sabine scanned him up and down. His boots still had mud on them, and he still wore a traveling cloak.
“Odella wrote to me.”
Sabine blinked a few times. She’d specifically asked Odella, their head of household, not to trouble Matthias at the border. “I asked her not to.”
Matthias frowned and came to her side. Standing over her, he pressed a hand to cup her cheek. Sabine found herself leaning into the touch, desperate, tears already forming behind her eyes.
“You should have written to me,” he said. “I know what grief feels like.”
Was Sabine grieving? Grief did not feel like the right emotion — more a helplessness, an utter futility, the fact that she kept destroying her body for the sake of some war that Matthias wanted, and even being a womb was something she could not do properly.
Matthias sat down next to her, eyes following the trajectory of her gaze to where Miklan was practicing a lunge. “You’re watching him?”
“I’m always watching him,” said Sabine. She let herself lean on Matthias’s shoulder. “He’s so strong and smart. I can see you in him, and it…”
“Does it not hurt?” said Matthias. “Watching him, after…”
Sabine shook her head lightly. Matthias smelled like his horse and the brittle summer road and sweat, and she found it strangely comforting. He’d ridden to her quickly, perhaps not stopping for rest. It was the type of thing a good husband who loved her would have done; even if Matthias didn’t, he had still come to her side. Maybe she wasn’t so angry at Odella for disobeying her commands after all.
“Miklan is my entire heart,” she said quietly. “Is he not yours?”
Matthias stiffened. It hurt, slightly, to know that his answer was, undoubtedly no. Perhaps he would say something about how Gautier held his heart, or how part of his heart also lay with his friends — Lambert and Rodrigue and perhaps, her. She could convince herself that he meant those things, even though he was staring into the middle distance in a way that said he was still fixated on another, unsolved wrong. Arabella, even now.
“I’m proud of him,” said Matthias. “He grows stronger and more cunning with every day.” He paused. “I’ll start teaching him tactics, given a year or so. He’ll take quickly to it.”
“Already?”
“He’s nearly six,” said Matthias. “And he can already beat most of his friends in a round of chess.”
Gautier was odd — there weren’t many other noble children around, so Miklan played games with sons of cobblers and sons of knights who had been sons of cobblers. Sabine had taken some time to adjust to the fact that knighthood in Gautier was not based on written notes of recommendation but rather, on whoever could wield a lance and was willing to spend most of their life in a dark fortress on a hostile border. She didn’t mind that her son made friends with so many types of people; it was just new to her. And it was hardly surprising that Miklan could beat his friends in chess, when he was the only one among them who had private tutors and a castle for his home.
“I’m sorry, Sabine,” said Matthias, placing a hand on her knee. “I — there are healers in Fhirdiad, who might be able to make this endeavor more successful. I…don’t want to push you to move on too quickly, yet…”
“Can we just…focus on Miklan for a little while?” said Sabine. “Just…give me time with him.”
She could feel the ice begin to creep into Matthias’s finger and the winds of his blizzard pick up. How typical. Every day she wished for sunny weather, she unleashed a storm.
“Of course.” He kissed her temple and stood up. “Take the time you need for grief. Just…it is good to move forward.” Matthias’s version of love, she was starting to see, was that he was good enough to keep his storm from bubbling over while she was in the room.
Hypocrite , thought Sabine, as her husband left her colder and less comforted than she had been before his arrival. Perhaps he earnestly thought that pushing for a war for the sake of revenge was moving forward.
Sabine set her eyes on Miklan again. He was her son. Moving forward was to give her best for him.
***
Except, as the summer turned to another winter, as that winter turned to another summer, Matthias started to get impatient. He held his tongue, because he was a good man, but sometimes he looked at her with one of his looks and she saw so much irritation. Frustration. Disappointment. Sabine hated to meet his eyes, because it made her nervous to be on the receiving end of his tidal wave of negative feelings. She could still feel the force of the feelings pressing into her back, but at least she didn’t have to read them from his face.
“Sabine,” said Matthias later, as they traveled to Fhirdiad together, at the end of the summer, when the Verdant Rain Moon soaked all of Faerghus in a desolate mud and overcast sky. “I hate to bring this up, but we made a deal.”
Sabine looked up silently.
Matthias stood in front of her, arms crossed, and he did look at her clearly. “I am taking you to healers in Fhirdiad. I will go, too, of course, but…” He tightened his hands into fists so tight they would leave bruises where he gripped his inner arms. “But I need a child. That has to be my priority. That was our deal.”
“And if I can’t do it?” said Sabine.
Matthias had always been honest with her, hadn’t he? This time he just said, “Don’t make me say it. Miklan adores you, and you are an excellent Margravine. But…”
You would take me from my son? Sabine didn’t bother to ask the question, because she knew the answer she would get. She refused to let Matthias tell her that Miklan was, in fact, Arabella’s son.
“You proposed to me four years ago,” said Sabine. “We’ve been married for nearly as long as the two of you were. Maybe four years is as long as you can manage.”
“Sabine.”
Sabine just blinked at him slowly, like cat might show its love.
“I want a future with you,” began Matthias. “B-but I told you when we got engaged...”
He’d never stammered in front of her before. Maybe that should have counted for something.
It didn’t.
She went to the damn healers in Fhirdiad. She tried all their stupid advice. She made Matthias ask Rodrigue if he and Thérèse had done anything special to get pregnant. She got on her knees in the damn Church of Seiros in Camulus and prayed, prayed for the Goddess herself to bless her stupid womb. She prayed on the way home at every church she found; she got off the road and said a prayer to the fucking Srengi Goddess of Fertility, because why the fuck not, at this point. She prayed to every other deity for children she’d ever heard tales of, until prayer was a constant internal monologue — don’t let him take me from my son, don’t let him send me away, please give me the child I need to keep my Miklan.
She hated it.
She hated all of this.
And yet she did it.
Matthias took a trip to the North Bridge, and the day he returned, Sabine carefully completed every fertility ritual and every step she could possibly imagine.
“Matthias,” she said when he stepped into their room. She sat cross-legged and naked on their bed.
“Sabine?”
“Come impregnate me,” said Sabine flatly.
Matthias put down his bags and shut the door. “Right there?”
“As good a place as any,” said Sabine. “How were your travels?”
“Good.” Matthias shucked off his belt. “Everything is secure at the bridge, which is what matters.”
He fucked her.
She hated it.
She hated all of this.
Perhaps she also hated herself, because her body was such an important thing, had always been the most important thing that got her what she wanted — Sabine had a Crest which made her very, very special — and here it was failing her so deeply it threatened to take her son from her, here it was also her last-ditch hope to keep her life.
***
Something worked. Sabine became pregnant and stayed that way.
***
Sabine and the child growing within her were incompatible at best and downright enemies at worst — it was like her body became a monster to vanquish. Either she was vomiting horribly or constantly making waste; she was in too much pain to sleep well and too tired to do anything well while awake. Her breasts ached, and her back screamed, and her thighs throbbed, and there was an ever-present pressure on her head.
Rodrigue went to Gautier to help Matthias with the winter distribution; Sabine wintered in Fraldarius with Thérèse. They made quite a pair, the pregnant Duchess Fraldarius and the pregnant Margravine Gautier. At first, Sabine delighted in the attention and the company of another woman, and it made her realize just how much she’d missed connection with her friends. Except — except all she and Thérèse had in common was their pregnancy, and more and more often, conversations rang hollow. Or sometimes conversations just rang, and the high-pitched noise in the back of her head never really went away. Everyone in Sabine’s life who had avoided coming to Gautier suddenly flocked to her while she was in Fraldarius. Her siblings wanted to see her. Her cousins wanted to visit. Her mother and father came to see her, and her aunt, Count Charon, came to meet her and congratulate her. She was a spectacle, an entertaining ball to play with; she existed from tit to thigh.
When they reunited to Gautier for the start of spring, Matthias still would not let Sabine out of his sight. At first she delighted in the attention, thinking that perhaps finally he was seeing her as an equal to Arabella, trying not to lose her in the same way he’d lost her. Except then she looked at Matthias closely and saw, even with her pregnant confusion, the storm in his eyes. It looked like a wrinkle of his nose and the slightest gritting of his teeth, but it meant something like — I CANNOT LOSE HER, I NEED THAT CHILD, I AM SO CLOSE TO HAVING MY REVENGE.
It’s just bodies. Matthias’s storm blew right through her; all she was, was this womb and the child within it.
***
And worse —
“Matthias, we need the nursery.”
“No. We will have another one built.”
“Matthias, it has been over four years. Nearly five now.”
“We will have a guest room refurbished.”
“Matthias — ”
“Sabine. Please.”
“I’ll have Odella clean out all the damn artwork and possessions, you won’t have to touch a — ”
“No one will touch anything in the nursery!”
“There are about three dozen priceless paintings in that room you want to collect dust!”
“It is all I have left of them!”
I had four children die inside of me, and yet it’s Arabella’s dead child who gets their own room.
— even when she was carrying Matthias’s child, he would not admit that Arabella was gone.
***
“Miklan,” called Sabine, quietly. “Do you want to feel your little sibling? They’re awake right now.”
Her stomach lurched every few seconds, little Syl working out their legs. She and Matthias had already settled on names: Sylvia Jace for a girl, Sylvain Jose for a boy. At her invitation, Miklan scrambled over to her, forgetting his arithmetic problems on the floor. Sabine held Miklan’s hands and gently brought them to her stomach.
“Can you feel them?” asked Sabine. “They’re saying hello to you.”
Miklan stared in fascination at the way Sabine’s stomach moved. “Hello, little sibling.”
He stood there against Sabine’s chaise for a few moments and then climbed up to sit next to her, losing interest in the baby in favor of nestling into Sabine’s side and clinging to her hand. “Mother?”
“Yes, love.”
“Everyone’s really excited about the baby.”
“Yes.”
“Because…they might have a Crest.”
Sabine paused. She started stroking Miklan’s hair with the hand he wasn’t already clinging to. Choosing her words carefully, Sabine said, “well…that’s part of it, but not the only reason. We’re excited that we’re going to have another child. We’re excited that you are going to be a big brother.”
“But it’s important that they have a Crest,” said Miklan. “That’s what Father wants. That’s what we need for Faerghus.” After a quiet moment, he continued, “Crested kids are special.”
“Mhmm,” said Sabine. “Darling, you know you’re special, right?”
“Not that kind of special.”
“No, but that’s not the only way to be special.”
Miklan was clever and strong — he had his father’s calculation, and he knew the cold resilient steel of a Gautier winter. He looked up at Sabine and said, “you only became my mother because you have a Crest. If you had been like me, born without one, Father wouldn’t have married you.”
Sabine froze, trapped in his words. Because, brilliant child that he was, he was probably right.
“Your father also wouldn’t have married me unless you liked me,” said Sabine slowly. “So you —”
Miklan saw straight through the bullshit. “Mother,” said Miklan. “If the baby has a Crest…”
If the baby had a Crest, Matthias would drag Faerghus to war. If the baby had a Crest, Matthias would grab Lambert by the force of his honor and drag him and Rodrigue up to the border and beyond it, and they would spill blood until Matthias was satisfied. If the baby had a Crest, Matthias would be happy with her. It’s just bodies — fuck him, it was lives .
Miklan finished his sentence, frightened: “…Father won’t need me anymore.”
Sabine drew her arms around Miklan and held him close. Miklan began to cry.
“I don’t want to be replaced,” sobbed Miklan.
“My darling,” said Sabine, kissing him on the temples. “My dearest one. You are my son. You are my sunshine and my rain. You are my summer and my winter.” She held him close, her darling son, perhaps the only person in the world she truly and unfailingly loved. “You are my world, and I will never let anyone replace you.”
***
On the fifth day of Garland Moon, in the Imperial Year 1160, Sylvain tried to kill her.
It was like, as he ripped his way out of her, Sylvain had turned her body against her. She lay awash in blood, his screams echoing through her ears. She wobbled between death and life, for a matter of days. She had wished for sunshine and gotten rain, and when she woke, all the lights in the world had dimmed in a way they would never brighten again.
Sabine could not bring herself to think. She lay in bed and stared at the parts of herself that existed in front of her. Hands that had been cleaned of blood. Arms with all their gooseflesh raised. Excess stomach flesh that extended on and on and on; sometimes she could swear she still felt Sylvain hiding somewhere in her. She could not feed him — whenever he came close, she either cried or laughed or felt the need to rip all her hair out, and she could not explain it.
Matthias had no idea what to do with her, and even watching Miklan train or listening to Miklan read her poems could only keep her distracted for a little while. She had so many thoughts and fears that she couldn’t explain — that something was burrowing into her skin, that the milk dripping from her breasts was somehow her lifeblood falling from her. It took months before she could hold her own baby for more than a few minutes. She stared at him and slowly came to process that Sylvain was a person in the world now. He could not hurt her any longer. He was a baby — she could kill him without hesitation, if she wanted to. She wouldn’t. But she could.
For that reason, maybe, she settled. She no longer heard screams where they weren’t any or felt blood on her throat when she looked at the baby. Her baby. Her and Matthias’s baby. Goddess, but it hurt so much that she could barely stand to look at him. She wanted to be a good mother the way Miklan had taught her to be — but she looked at him and remembered blood and pain and loneliness and the way her mind could simply yawn open to produce horrors. She worked carefully, always keeping healers in the room. It was a tentative, difficult first year as she learned to tolerate Sylvain’s presence, then…well she never exactly enjoyed it, but she could look at him and think, that’s my son.
One night, Matthias chewed on a knuckle and said, quietly, “you know, my mother died in childbirth.”
Sabine stared at him.
“As did my great-aunt.”
“Get to the point, Matthias.”
“The Crest of Gautier, when it goes off, tends to…break things.”
Sabine could have killed Matthias, too, then. “Are you saying that I nearly died because my son’s fucking Crest of Gautier activated while I was in labor?”
“It is only a thought, it could be a good number of — ”
“I’m glad he probably has a Crest, because you will never sleep with me again. Now get out of my sight. Go ask Lambert or Rodrigue for tips on what to do when you make a deal with a woman and don’t mention that her end of the deal will kill her. ”
Several months of absolute frigidity between them later, Matthias approached her with a full apology and a heartfelt promise that he’d only put together the pieces on the Crest of Gautier’s destructive effects after watching her be so desperately ill. Sabine was too tired and lonely to do anything but let him hold her as she cried. It was a relief to think of herself as a miracle. It was a comfort, to know that at least she could blame Sylvain’s possible Crest.
Still, she was grateful that Matthias had built a second nursery on the other side of the house, deep in the guest quarters — unless she made an effort, she couldn’t hear Sylvain screaming.
***
According to others, Sylvain was, in order: a precious baby, a clever little guy, a promising young heir, a curious future scholar, a boy who looked like his father.
According to Sabine, Sylvain was, in order: a fussy baby, a whiny infant, an entitled Crested child, an overcurious explorer, a devil with Matthias’s eyes.
Yes, he had his good traits: he was socially gifted and could read a room with the same astuteness that Sabine could. He was always on his best behavior for guests and never made a fool of Sabine or Matthias, when they were in public. He admired his brother, genuinely. But Goddess — with Sylvain, there was always, always a need to ask why , a need to point at something out of place and ask what its function was. He was too much. He was nothing like Sabine, nothing like Matthias, and yet when he was three years old and first manifested that horrific crooked sun, Matthias whipped him up in his arms and grinned larger than he’d ever smiled at Sabine.
He went to Fhirdiad to tell Lambert the news: he could now wage his damn war.
When he was four, Sylvain came to Sabine sobbing, absolutely inconsolable. Already nursing a headache, Sabine turned to him and sighed, “what is it, Sylvain?”
“Miklan said — Miklan said I should never have been born ,” cried Sylvain.
Sabine sighed. She shut her book. “Come here, dear.” And when Sylvain clambered over to her, Sabine put an arm around him and said, “you being born was very important.”
“R-really?”
“Yes. Do you know why?”
Sylvain sniffled. “Why?”
“Because you , Sylvain, have a Crest. And that makes you very, very special.” It meant Matthias could wage his war. It meant someone could carry on the Gautier family name for another blasted generation. It meant someone could guard the border and hold the Lance of Ruin. It meant Sylvain could be given everything he’d ever dreamed of, ripping his birthright’s privileges out of Sabine. It meant he, just like Sabine, was a body, nothing more. “You had to be born, you see, because you have two very important duties.” She lifted Sylvain’s fingers in the number two. Folding in his thumb, she said, “you have to fight, just like your father, to keep Faerghus safe.” She folded in his index finger. “And one day, you have to have a baby who has your Crest, too.” Sabine squeezed his closed fist. “So, there. You had to be born, you see? Because you need to do those things. That’s your duty.”
“And because Miklan doesn’t have a Crest,” said Sylvain, already starting to understand this world, “he can’t do the things I have to do.”
“That’s right.”
“Is it a good thing?” said Sylvain. “A Crest?”
Her whole life, Sabine had been told that it was.
Now she thought it probably was a curse.
“It’s not good or bad,” she said. “It’s just a part of you. All it means is that you have a responsibility to more than just yourself. Remember that, hm? You are very, very important, because you have the distinct honor of fighting for your homeland and having children.” She poked him on the nose. If she were anyone else, it would have been affectionate. Maybe it still was? “Just make sure your future wife knows what she’s getting herself into.”
***
Rumors started to reach her that Miklan and his friends tormented Sylvain. Sabine brushed them off — they were boys, that was how they played. Plus, Sylvain was a bit of a brat, and it was no surprise his friends pushed him around. As they got older, as the bruises became obvious, she had to remind herself that Sylvain needed to toughen up somewhat, as he was meant to put his body on the line for his kingdom. He needed to be tough to protect the young Prince Dimitri, and if Miklan’s games with him became a little rough, fine. Sylvain needed to learn to protect himself so he could be ready to offer his body up for Dimitri at any moment.
Still…she did ask Miklan to have breakfast with her.
“Miklan,” said Sabine, “Let me be blunt with you, in regards to your brother.”
Miklan was turning into a force of a man: strong like his father, wickedly clever, the exact type of man she’d follow to war. If it were not for this ridiculous Crest business, he would have been an incredible Margrave Gautier. He deserved it, in many ways; all Sylvain had done was have the right sort of body.
“What about him?” asked Miklan innocently.
“I understand that the two of you do not always see eye-to-eye,” said Sabine. “And I think it makes sense that your training and games become rough. But please remember, we do need him. Faerghus needs him.”
Miklan clenched his hands into fists. “Do we?”
“He is special,” said Sabine simply. “He’s your father’s heir, and he has a Crest. That means he needs to be able to put his body on the line to defend the king, and he needs to eventually reproduce.” She shrugged. “Please, when you are training or going for walks or playing together, remember that he needs to be able to do those things.” She leaned forward. “If you cause any accidents that damage his body, my love, I won’t be able to protect you.”
Miklan leaned forward, too. “I understand. Thank you, Mother.”
***
Miklan was smart. If Matthias was not the exact same way, Sabine would have said she passed it along to him.
“Miklan, love, don’t stay out too long,” said Sabine when Sylvain was seven and Miklan fourteen. “I’m hoping to do some reading outside today.”
Miklan smiled. “Yes, Mother.”
Somehow, that day was a torrential downpour, and that was the day Sylvain ended up in a well.
“Miklan, love, don’t go too far, okay?” called Sabine, when Sylvain was nine and Miklan sixteen, and Matthias’s war was right around the corner. “I was thinking of going down to the village, as it’s such a nice and sunny day.”
Miklan smiled. “Yes, Mother, we’ll be careful.”
Somehow, that day was the start of a blizzard, the very blizzard where Sylvain almost died on the side of the mountains.
Nursing him back to health fell to Sabine somehow, so she spent an endless amount of time at Sylvain’s bedside while Miklan and Matthias sparred in the training yard. She watched her delicate son sleep while her stronger son prepared to avenge his mother — no, his birth mother , Miklan didn’t remember Arabella, Sabine was his mother.
Sylvain woke from a dangerous fever and mumbled, “Mother?”
“Yes, love.” She said it without thinking, her hands busy with a cross-stitching project and her mind wandering with her eyes, watching Matthias and Miklan spar out the window.
Sylvain leaned on his side and took a deep breath, then collapsed into coughing. At once, Sabine turned back to offer him a glass of water. This nurturing, healing thing — it wasn’t natural to her. But somehow, in his rare burst of interest in her, Matthias had asked her to be in charge of the territory while he marched off to war in the summer.
He was bringing Miklan with him. That was the worst part: Miklan would be at his side, lance in hand, vulnerable to the cold and then the scorching heat.
Sabine turned her attention back to Sylvain as he sat up in bed. “Don’t strain yourself, dear. You need to rest.” She took back the glass of water, stroking back a few strands of Sylvain’s hair. Immediately he grabbed onto her hand and held it to his cheek. Sylvain had Matthias’s storms. He was nine years old, and yet he could smile and let his eyes flicker close so innocently, yet it felt like he was screaming: TELL ME I’M A GOOD SON, I LOVE YOU, I WANT TO MAKE YOU PROUD, LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE ME.
“Nothing. I’m okay,” he said, nuzzling into her touch like a hunting dog begging for treats and pets. “I’m just really, really happy that you’re here.”
***
When Matthias and Miklan went to war, Sabine managed Gautier and sent Sylvain off to play in Fhirdiad with Prince Dimitri. It was good for him to befriend the young prince; even if his duty wasn’t to shadow the prince’s every move like Thérèse and Rodrigue’s boys, it was good for him to be close. It gave her the time to breathe and manage the territory as she wanted it to be run. She tentatively invited her siblings to join her and was not surprised when every invitation was declined.
Was this place really so desolate? She’d grown fond of it.
Power was best wielded in solitude, she decided: Gautier would thrive under her guidance, and without the need to constantly manage Sylvain and Miklan or keep Matthias under control, she found herself getting to know her territory better than she ever had before. She threw herself into the work and found it a delight.
Needless to say, it was a short six weeks.
Then Lambert took an axe through the intestines, war chief Oleg took a tumble into a ravine, and Matthias and Rodrigue signed a ceasefire on their king’s behalf. All her boys came home with a new variable in the form of Leif Tuer Egilson, twelve years old, the right features to become handsome as an adult, quiet and thoughtful. He watched and he listened and he learned — Castle Gautier became a minefield. Managing her strange family had always been an exercise in overtures of power; that game was now intensified. At all times, it was like Miklan and Sylvain and Matthias and were always pretending to be in total control while pushing the others to their limit. At the same time, they were also pretending to be united for the sake of Leif. It was a headache, most of the time, though she understood the need for the exercise. She played along, helped Leif write his letters and praised Miklan and Sylvain more when Leif was around. She understood that her role was to make them stronger and cleverer and support them in their duties. One day Sylvain would be Margrave, and Miklan would be…
…well, he would be something.
Either way, they would be important one day, rulers in their own right. Sabine would not get Gautier to herself ever again; she knew that, yet it hurt. If she’d only been born in different circumstances, given a chance to prove herself beyond organizing medicine through the coldest parts of their war-torn land each year…she wondered what she could be.
Sometimes she brought a book or cross-stitching project to watch the boys play chess against Matthias. They played in the round, Matthias in the middle and the three boys on the outside, each with their own board. Matthias could use his armies interchangeably, meaning that if Miklan lost his queen, Matthias could deploy it against Leif or Sylvain. Before long, the games spawned their own set of politics, which was, of course, exactly the point. She’d watch Leif and Miklan lose their queens immediately to ensure that Sylvain was crushed quickly and would take the punishment given to the worst player. She’d watch Sylvain desperately beg Leif to get him out of some deal he and Miklan had struck, to go easy on him.
She enjoyed the small hobbies she’d picked up, like horseback riding and cross-stitching and calligraphy. Still, when she watched them play their little games, she yearned to join them. I went to the Officer’s Academy, too. she wanted to point out. I’ve killed people. I can cast Ragnarok. I know how to play chess. I know how to navigate the politics of this household better than anyone.
Matthias never asked; Sabine couldn’t bring herself to beg. Instead she sat like a beautiful flower and wilted away.
***
There was one time, only one time, Sabine actually did hear Sylvain screaming, and that was when King Lambert was killed in Duscur.
She was staying on Sylvain’s side of the house for once because Matthias needed space to mourn Lambert. His grief was taking a new shape, one that was way more hot and violent. The first time he raised his voice at her, he backed off and collapsed into a chair and gasped — “give me a few days, Sabine. I don’t want to risk hurting you.” Again, his greatest form of love was avoidance.
The letter had come in only the day before. They would leave for Fhirdiad shortly, for the funeral, and then they would go to Fraldarius to help Rodrigue and Thérèse bury their son. Sabine was already bracing herself for what was to come. Thérèse and Rodrigue were sentimental and loud about their emotions – they were going to be inconsolable. She was grateful, at the very least, that Miklan hadn’t been close to Glenn.
So to hear the Crest activate, something heavy shatter into pieces, and Sylvain simply wail was…startling.
He broke off into words after about twenty seconds of horrible, frantic crying. “I can’t — this is — fuck you, Sothis, what did I ever do to deserve this, what did he do to deserve this, couldn’t you have taken me instead? Fucking — fuck. I don’t want to go bury him. I wanted to — I thought we — this can’t be happening.”
For the first time in a long time, Sabine thought perhaps she should go comfort her son. She shuffled on her house-shoes and slid down the hall. Sylvain’s sobbing actually started to sound like it was choking him.
She raised a hand to knock and then heard a voice, quiet, in response.
“Aye, ‘vain, and what are you going to do about it? Burn Duscur to the ground?”
Leif.
Sabine withdrew her hand.
“No, no, of course -- no. No. I. No. I just. Goddess, Leif.”
Leif gave a quiet tsk. “Wondering if it runs in the family, is all. First love killed abroad, so you wage a war. Oi, don’t give me that look — do I look like one of your little blondes?”
Sylvain’s sobs started once again. After a second and an elongated sigh, Sabine could hear Leif going to comfort Sylvain. She just stared at the door, unable to comprehend what they were talking about. First love… He couldn’t have meant…he couldn’t have meant Glenn Fraldarius. Could he?
“You’re going to leave me, too,” Sylvain broke off. “Right after he did. I know — I know you’re planning it.”
“Hush, ‘vain. None of that now.”
Sabine had lakes of indifference in her heart when it came to Leif Tuer Egilson. It did not surprise her to know that he was comforting Sylvain, nor that he was intending to use the chaos of King Lambert’s death to sneak back home. Matthias suspected it, too, and they’d both decided it would be easiest to just let Leif go, rather than try to extend the army they did not have.
A part of her still wanted to knock and be the arms Sylvain fell into, if only to replace his grief with that way he looked at her with adoration.
“He’s going to kill me,” said Sylvain. “If you leave, he’ll kill me.”
“Tak. Why do that?”
“I — if I’m gone, Miklan gets everything. You don’t — it doesn’t work the same way here as it does in Sreng. I have the Crest of Gautier, and he doesn’t, so I get everything. If I die early, he could be heir again. I — I shouldn’t be telling you this, but…I’m afraid. He wants me dead. It’s all he’s ever wanted.”
Sabine flinched. As her heart beat faster, she found herself knocking. At once, the boys went silent.
“Sylvain. A word.”
She heard the harsh intake of breath and the adjusting of cloth. When Sylvain came to the door, he stood at his full height, in a good posture, and he held his arms behind his back. It wasn’t immediately apparent that he’d been sobbing, but Sabine could have found the signs. Puffy eyes, almost looking bruised, a tear on his lip where it was clear he’d been biting at it.
“Walk with me.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Sylvain went back to biting his lip as they walked, sending Sabine tentative looks. He was her height now; he’d surpass her if he hit another growth spurt, which wasn’t entirely out of the question. She walked until she was certain that Leif was out of earshot, and then she said, “I should hope you’re not giving our prisoner a precise map and guideposts on how to take Gautier.”
“No, Mother.” Sylvain looked at the ground. “I don’t know what you heard, but…”
Were you in love with Glenn Fraldarius?
“You need to keep your guard up, Sylvain,” said Sabine quietly. “You are to be Margrave Gautier one day, and the Margrave Gautier is in charge of keeping the border secure. Protecting what matters most.”
Sylvain nodded. “I know that. I -- I know.”
Sabine turned to her son, putting a hand on his shoulder. At once, she received that totally desperate, hopeful look. It was almost a whine, small and pathetic: please love me please love me please love me please love me. She sighed.
“You must be more careful about who hears and sees you be vulnerable,” said Sabine, putting her other hand on Sylvain’s shoulder, turning him to face her fully. “Do you understand? You are part of the border’s defenses. If you display your fears and concerns to your enemies, then — ”
“I know,” said Sylvain. “I’m sorry for troubling you. I — the news of what happened to King Lambert shocked me, and…”
“And you went to our enemy to share your feelings.”
“I’m sorry,” repeated Sylvain. “I’m — Mother, I’m sorry, I just…” Tears began to well up in his eyes, but he swallowed them back, pushed them down, pressed them off his eyelashes with a single decisive blink. “I’ll be better. I’ll — I won’t let my feelings stop me from what I have to be.”
A crossroads. Sabine could have embraced him, or she could have spurned him. “You can…” The words took a few tries to get out. “You can trust me.”
Sylvain believed her. Sylvain always, always believed her.
“I’m scared, Mother,” he whispered. “I — I know I’m not at my best, I know this — this thing will — never mind, I just. I think Miklan wants to kill me, and if there’s a good time, it’s —”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” The words shot out of her mouth. “Miklan is your brother. Your family. He would never do anything of the sort.” She couldn’t bear the pain in Sylvain’s eyes, so she did embrace him then, if only so she could tuck his head beneath her chin and avoid looking at him. “You are simply wounded by the news of today’s tragedy and fearful. I understand you don’t see eye-to-eye, but to kill you? Don’t be paranoid, Sylvain.”
Sylvain closed his eyes and took a deep, centering breath. “Okay.”
He always, always believed her — even then.
Sabine, on the other hand, was starting to wonder if she even believed herself.
***
Four years ago, Leif just barely managed to stave off an assassin in Sylvain’s bedroom window – they blamed it on Sreng, because Matthias was always quick to believe in Sreng’s interference, but Sabine wasn’t entirely sure anymore. Three years ago, a fall from a high platform broke Sylvain’s leg and left him a year behind his peers in his training. Last year, Sylvain’s horse “somehow” bucked him into a half-frozen creek, even though she’d never spooked without provocation before. Then there was the blizzard, not to mention the flooding well.
These pieces came together to form an image that frightened her: not because of what it meant for Sylvain, but because of what it meant for her son.
“Miklan, love?” she called one night that they were in Fraldarius, watching Miklan practice his lancework. “Are you…doing alright?”
Miklan was twenty-three. He commanded most of Gautier’s knights. He was strong and wicked-smart, and if Faerghus was not in shambles, Sabine would be doing her best to find him a wife he loved. She’d offered a couple of times, but Miklan always shook his head and insisted he’d rather focus on his training.
Miklan leaned on his lance. “Sure am.” When he saw the expression of worry on her face, he continued, “am I really the one you need to be talking to, Mother? The brat’s having a breakdown.”
“He has plenty of outlets for his pain.” Whether or not he’d loved Glenn Fraldarius, Sylvain was now starting to rake through women with the libido to account for both him and Miklan. Sabine had no idea how to give him advice in that direction, nor did she really want to know where his sudden fascination in women had come from. “You seem to be waging war on Rodrigue’s training dummies.”
Miklan leaned back on his lance. “Yeah. Somebody’s got to be the competent one at a time like this.”
Sabine smiled. “You have always been an incredible leader.”
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me that,” said Miklan. “Not like it matters though, right?” He twirled his lance, adjusting his grip like he was about to get in another round on the dummy. “I can train all I want, but apparently, competence gets thrown out the window if you have the right blood.”
She stepped into the training yard, surprised at the dust brushing up on her boots. “It’s just bodies,” she murmured, half to herself. She set her eyes on the same dummy her son had just brutally beat down.
“It really shouldn’t be that way,” said Miklan. “Gautier should be ruled by the person who was trained for the job. Faerghus, too.” After a moment, he said, “what happened to the late king was a tragedy. No doubt about it. But King Lambert was a soft-hearted ruler, and I don’t know if he was fit to be king. If we can deal with Duscur swiftly, the Archduke will be able to set the Kingdom on track. He was trained for it.”
“You’d like to change our system?”
“Exactly. And…sometimes you need a little blood to get that point across.” He lunged again for the training dummy.
Sabine did something impulsive and dangerous: she traced her fingers across the palm of her hand, muscle memory kicking into gear. An extension of her hands in the air, a dazzle of magic —
Miklan skidded to a stop as the training dummy lit into flames, the swirling heat of Bolganone decimating it. He looked back at her, awestruck.
“I didn’t know you knew magic,” he said bluntly.
Sabine fixed her son with a serious look and said, “that’s because your father married me for my womb, and I have been nothing since then.”
Miklan stepped close to her, smelling a little bit of smoke. He offered his lance to her. “That should never have happened. To either of us. Mother, listen. I — you never wanted your fate, and I never wanted mine, and were it not for Sylvain — ”
“Were it not for Sylvain, I would have been taken from you,” said Sabine, her voice coming out shaky. She stepped up to cup Miklan’s cheeks in her hands. “I am endlessly proud of the man you’ve become, and were we in a different world, I would be proud to see you become the Margrave. But, love…sometimes we need to follow the path duty lays for us. It is not an easy path. But it is the path that is best for Faerghus. That is why it exists.”
Miklan said, “do you really believe that?”
Sabine brushed Miklan’s hair behind his ears. His question terrified her. He wore his intent on his face so obviously: he truly thought he was the best person to rule Gautier. Maybe he was. Maybe she was. Maybe she should have stopped Matthias from waging his war, somehow inserted herself into the game and forced him to give up his insane ambitions. Maybe, if she’d been playing their game of power all along, things would be better now.
She blinked. This line of thinking would get her nowhere. “I know that I cannot help you, if you stray.”
Miklan’s face fell, and he stepped out of her touch, though he did bow and press a courteous kiss to her hand. “Thank you, Mother. But, respectfully, it doesn’t mean very much, if you won’t even help yourself.”
***
Two weeks later, Miklan tried to kill Sylvain in cold blood; only his Crest and paranoia saved his life. Sabine could deny it no longer: her brightest light had become capable of murder.
“Matthias, you can’t possibly be thinking…”
“He tried to kill his brother, Sabine,” said Matthias, hands on his hips. “I don’t know what else to do. Sylvain is my heir , and clearly, Miklan has no respect for that.” He stepped forward, folding his hands around hers. “I love him, too. He’s…he’s…”
He’s all you have left of Arabella. “He’s our son.”
“Yes,” said Matthias. “But we can’t let Sylvain die, and if he’s no longer safe around Miklan, then…”
Sabine nodded. But she did lean forward and find some comfort in her husband’s arms, letting him hold her while she cried. Please don’t take my son from me, she prayed once again to the Goddess, but this time, there was nothing Sothis could do.
Miklan was apoplectic.
“You’re choosing him? ”
“What do you want me to do, Miklan!” cried Sabine. “You tried to kill your brother. I told you we couldn’t lose him. I told you he was special. I told you I couldn’t protect you, if — ”
“You also told me — ” Miklan’s voice broke. He did not contain storms the way Matthias did; he must have gotten it from Arabella, the way he blustered and so obviously displayed his hatred and anger. When he cried, he simply looked pathetic. “You also told me that you wouldn’t let him replace me.”
All the wind was knocked from Sabine’s lungs. Her heart had broken long ago, but what was left of it was crushed into powder in her chest. She sat down, watching her son rage around the room for a few moments.
“Sylvain didn’t replace you,” said Sabine. She knew she had moments before she started to cry; she contained her own storms, after so long of learning how to monitor Matthias’s. “You ruined yourself.”
Miklan snarled, bestial. Sabine knew she had been ignoring every sign of it, and yet she hated to see it so fully revealed. Sabine wondered briefly if he’d always been this way, and she’d just been desperate to love her son.
“I love you, Miklan.”
Miklan did not respond. Sabine felt the weight of his silence, of his absence, in every second thereafter. Castle Gautier grew darker and darker each day. Every time Sabine saw Sylvain, everything dimmed further. Maybe Miklan had been right all those years ago — if they had not needed Sylvain, things would be better; if Sylvain was not so weak and curious and delicate all the time, things would be better; if Sylvain had not taken apart Sabine’s body in order to sustain his own, things would be better.
She broke down more often and antagonized Matthias just so she might remind them both how wrong everything had gone. When she could stand Sylvain, she ensured he was learning more and preparing to be the Margrave. When looking at him made her want to cry, she simply hid herself in her quarters. Ordinarily, seeing Miklan’s smile or hearing of his accomplishments was enough to help with her deepest loneliness, but with every report she heard of him, he wasted his life away further. After all these years, the Goddess had taken her heart away, and Sabine was left to rot.
***
There is a war.
Miklan dies at Arianrhod. Matthias dies in Fraldarius.
Sylvain becomes the Margrave Gautier and signs a peace treaty. When he returns, he shakes the household upside down — dismissals left and right, replacements at every turn. He moves into his father’s room, claims his father’s desk, sleeps in the bed where he was conceived — and though he offers her better, Sabine exiles herself to the guest wing of the house. It is far away from everything, and much quieter, and no one can hear Sabine cry. Plus, it is closer to the only thing she has left in Gautier: the walkway to the garden, so she can complete her morning routine of laying flowers on Matthias and Miklan’s graves.
After a month of avoiding each other, Sylvain brings her breakfast in her quarters. She pities him. She sits in silence and does not cry. At last he says, “Mother. You understand me, and I understand you. Let’s cut to the chase.” He’s just like Matthias in some ways.
Sabine can see very little of herself in Sylvain. He has her delicate facial structure, maybe. Her long eyelashes. One thing she does know he got from both of his parents: the calculating look in his eye.
“A contingent of Federation troops will occupy Gautier for the next year, starting in the Harpstring Moon. I’ll stay here and make sure everything’s done right, of course, but there will be troops backing up the border, and there will be a Federation General staying in Castle Gautier as our guest. You are the Margravine Gautier, so the choice is entirely yours, but…I know the thought of staying here, with me and not my father, is already giving you nightmares. So if you want, you’re free to go to Camulus or Charon or wherever you’d like for the summer, and…I’ll make sure your duties get done.”
You’re free to go.
“Are you kicking your mother out of her house?” says Sabine. “After kicking me out of my room and dismissing my staff — you mean to do the final push?”
“No,” says Sylvain. “If you want to stay here, you can do so. I just…I know you’re grieving, and this place is probably nothing but bad memories, and it’ll be even worse when some idiot warm-weather general comes traipsing through here messing everything up. I just — I love you, Mother, and I want to give you options.”
He has somehow become kind, on top of stubborn; he has somehow become thoughtful and empathetic, on top of cunning and manipulative. It’s an insult stacked on top of so many injuries, that this pathetic boy who gutted his brother and ripped all the life from his mother still claims softness for himself.
Sabine leaves Gautier a month later, only a few days before a Federation General will come live in the room she’s been occupying. Sylvain said for the summer, which means he’s expecting her to come back and do the worst parts of her duty when winter begins to settle in. But Sabine is done with duty. She resolves herself to never set foot in Gautier again.
Her life was claimed by this war, too. Everything hereafter will simply be suspended animation.
***
Sabine will avoid her remaining son for the rest of her life, except for a period of three weeks when she will give in and visit, because he will turn Gautier into a flush of color for the sake of a wedding. Sylvain will find this person whose joy is infectious, who dives in front of spells and swords to protect him and who cannot give him an heir. Sylvain will unapologetically strive for peace and prosperity and change, dragging the king into the future and the whole kingdom with it. When Sabine goes to see him, Sylvain will smile and earnestly say that he’s so glad she came; his lover must have taught him earnestness, because Sabine certainly never did. Sylvain will wear a storm in his eyes the same way he always has and Matthias always did before him — a slightest curl of his lips and a bashful semi-blush, which Sabine will know to mean something like: YOU ARE MY HEART, YOU ARE MY LIGHT AND EVERY COLOR IT CREATES, YOU TAUGHT ME TO KNOW LOVE IN A WAY I NEVER HAD, WITH YOU AT MY SIDE I WILL BREAK FREE OF THIS CYCLE.
He will be very, very special, because he is Sylvain, and apparently that will be enough.
And oddly enough, Sabine will feel relieved.
fin.