[Mirabel Anstalionah.]
It was a radical thing to hear, even in a world governed by higher logic and warped reason.
Nicholas spoke as he held Miraculum's sleeping body in his arms, repeating his earlier statement with unsettling certainty.
"I think we should find them suitable partners now," he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I forced myself to stay composed and assess the situation rationally. In a few days, Nicholas would depart to lead the war himself.
We had just received word that Malachi and Kivana had returned, meaning Makilah would soon be tamed.
He was free to travel beyond the kingdom again, but still, this was absurd.
Perhaps he thought he might die. That, of course, was impossible.
The only reasonable conclusion was that my husband, brilliant as he was, had finally lost his mind.
As he laid Miraculum gently onto his pillow, I reached out and brushed my fingers through his hair.
"It's all right, my love," I said softly. "I'll be sure to find you suitable treatment."
My thoughts drifted briefly to Ri'Ishtar.
He had locked himself in his laboratory again, consumed by his obsession with perfecting medicine.
Perhaps he could help Nicholas; he would, for his king.
Nicholas looked at me, confusion flickering in his eyes, then sighed.
"I'm serious. My mother and father started looking around this time, too."
I paused to consider. My mother left the Roaming Giant for me, didn't she? Perhaps I should follow her example.
Then again, I would rather die than let Cassio or Miraculum be paraded before the wolves that call themselves nobles.
I wished Malachi and Kivana had a child. That would have been perfect. But that hope had long turned to dust.
"Who would we even consider?" I asked. "Surely none—"
He raised a hand to stop me. "You can handle that. I need to go soon anyway."
There was tension in his voice, a quiet dread.
When I tried to read his emotions, there was nothing, no deceit, no fear, only an emptiness that mirrored duty.
So he truly was serious about securing their future.
I reached out, resting my hands on his lap. "It'll be fine. Let's focus on keeping them safe, and the kingdom. Let's say… in a year?"
He paused, then nodded, his eyes unfocused.
"Yes… though I think four would be a better age. No, wait, five. Actually, let's make it two!"
He was unshakably firm in that absurd conviction, and I chose not to argue.
My own plan had been simple and deliberate, to wait until they were twenty, carefully select a range of suitable candidates.
After a careful and full year of reflection, choose the most stable one.
A rational, measured approach. That was how things should be.
I nodded quietly as he studied me.
"What are you thinking about right now?" he asked.
I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, pretending to stroke a beard. "The color of the sky."
He chuckled, a sound that softened the air between us, then rose to his feet, glancing down at me and Miraculum.
Cassio was already asleep, though she had a tendency to wander through her dreams.
Nicholas hadn't sleepwalked since that day on the training grounds, but seeing her inherit that quirk was oddly endearing.
I missed those nights when he would mumble strange things in his sleep, poems, broken verses, half-finished monologues that only made sense to him.
I used to listen to him speak in his sleep and think: even the mind of a king dreams of simpler worlds.
It was necessary to the kingdom that our children live.
But it was necessary to me that my husband remain exactly as he was, brilliant, gentle, and hopelessly cute.
He extended his hand, and I took it as he pulled me to my feet.
We walked quietly back to our room, the moonlight painting soft lines along the hall's marble floor.
I really did have many thoughts about the children's futures, perhaps too many.
Love, I have learned, must never be governed by impulse, nor dictated by the cold arithmetic of necessity.
If our kingdom is to outlast us, it must survive by will, not by convenience.
And yet tonight I could not tell which of those two truths guided my husband.
I could drown in him forever, laugh, cry, jest until the stars fell silent, but life permits no such idyll.
There is always a battlefield waiting.
Sometimes I fancied the ease of falsehood: to be like Lucifer, the Father of Lies.
It would be easy to wrap myself in a comfortable fiction and sit sovereign above consequence.
It is a tempting legend.
But I know his story; I know how that radiance fractures and how defeat follows.
So I must be honest with myself, and in that honesty I am most false, false to the self I would wish to be.
Nicholas opened our door with a reverent hand, and for a moment he was the best thing that had ever happened to me.
I have weathered a harsh life, harder even than most nobles endure, and that temper has only forged my wrath sharper.
Once loosened it cuts slow and dark.
Beneath the Central World, the peak and the root together, a bundle of shackles coils.
These are not mere fetters of politics or law; they transcend logic, possibility, even their own counters.
They bind even those of us who stand highest.
Across the countless worlds there are infinite dimensions and countless sets of rules, but ours commands a strange supremacy.
Other realms may be true in their fashion, yet beside the Central World they feel like fictions stripped of weight.
Those binding laws gnaw at me, a slow corrosion.
I feel them at the edges of my thought; I feel their teeth as they dull my reach.
And still, a tremor at the rim tells me the chains will loosen.
Soon, perhaps, I will be unmade then remade, released from these limits.
I am not eager.
The thought of what I might become terrifies me.
I am afraid of the self that waits beyond this threshold, and that fear makes me hesitate even as I strain forward.
Nicholas and I performed our nightly rituals: we spoke of war, traded half-jokes about impossible outcomes, recited laments for the living and the dead.
But when I lay beneath the covers, sleep would not come easily.
My mind spun on twin worries: pride and purpose.
I felt Samael's shadow brush close, the pride of complacency, and feared its shape.
Pride hardens into hubris, and hubris becomes the path to Lucifer's fate.
That was a duality I would not allow myself to embrace.
I clenched my hand into a fist, trembling against the weight of my own decision.
I would temper my rage. I would sheath it, not to smother it, but to wield it with intention.
My fury would become a sacred instrument, a tempered blade, honed and purified for one purpose.
I would offer it as a vow, to protect Nicholas, our children, and this kingdom.
My wrath would not destroy; it would preserve.
And by that gift, none of us would fall. We would rise.
During the day, I ran through countless simulations, weaving possibilities and rewriting outcomes in my mind.
The world bent and unfolded before me in abstract sequences, yet all of them led back to one thing, their laughter.
Their questions.
Their innocence.
Ah, that innocence. It belonged not only to Cassio and Miraculum, but to Nicholas as well.
For all his strength, his wisdom, and his quiet burden, he was still untouched by certain cruelties of the soul.
As I lay beside him that night, watching him sleep, I saw him as something fragile and precious, a black rose.
Beautiful, but haunted by its own shade.
A flower that mourned its color, believing itself cursed when in truth it had simply never been allowed to bloom again.
I whispered to him then, though he could not hear me.
He should not cry for what was lost. He should not carry the guilt of what was already redeemed.
He was the dawn breaking through a storm he could no longer see.
Was it foolish? Perhaps.
Perhaps it was naïve to believe my children and my husband could remain untouched by this world's decay.
Yet even knowing that, I chose to cherish it.
I chose to live in that foolishness, to guard it as one guards their final dream.
Yes, it was a paradox, but one worth embracing.
They said the king was dead. But to me, he, and all of us, had only just begun to live.
The kingdom was not dying; it was awakening. Nicholas, the children, even our sins and hatred, they had all been reborn.
It was then that a memory came to me, unbidden.
The image of a dying flower, brittle and pale, revived by the gentle touch of rain.
It bloomed again, not because it was worthy, but because the world itself willed it so.
My chest burned as the vision filled me, and tears welled unrestrained.
I wept softly, not out of despair, but out of revelation. Because for the first time, I understood.
Tomorrow would be terrible, yes, I knew that. The war, the blood, the cost of everything we had built.
But for the first time, it no longer frightened me.
Because I too had been resurrected.