In total, I'm told, Her Majesty pushed for twenty hours. It's no surprise that when you finally made your debut, she was exhausted. The whole ordeal was chaotic, but worth it. You were born in this very room.

His Majesty kept me, right there, by the fireplace, the entire time. Which, I was secretly thankful for, but also troubled by. Instead of holding my Queen's hand as I would have liked, I was forced to sit a ways away and listen to her cries over crackling wood. It was a strange event, to be both relieved I had somehow made it home in time to see your birth, but also tortured by my inability to do it right. I did try to be as close to Eliza as I could be, ...But I was planning tactics and... not your father.

When you crowned, both the King and I stood, flocking to Her Majesty's bedside. He seemed to come to life, and though the pause in his desire to work was briefly lived, I will say, I had no question that the King loved you as much as I did, and from the very start. I doubt that he expected to be so... moved by the experience. Or maybe he had been scared he wouldn't be? Maybe he threw himself into maps and conquests, to mask the worry before it was confirmed? Whatever the case, I think we were both shocked to find him so eager to hold you, as well.

Eliza was in and out of consciousness, and the King was... very proud of you and your golden head of hair. He flaunted you about the room and everybody cheered for him and his little twin. You had your father's eyes; cold, icy, blue... His everything, really. Even his grouchy sort of demeanor; you came out frowning.

And I... I had peace.

You were beautiful, but in a way that, for me, verified the existence of a God. Of God, period. It was debilitating how something so small could be the catalyst for so many larger things. But you? You weren't just a weeping infant in her father's arms; a trophy on display... You were my salvation.

With you as you came, blonde, fair skinned and not mine, you granted me everything I could ever have wanted just by being so. I could remain where I was. Eliza could remain where she was. His Majesty would not seek to murder us, and I would–

"Would you like to hold her?" he asked me.

"I..." I slowed, very nervously. A moment before, a hundred ideas of how I could effectively escape this very room with both your mother and you in tow had been my only thoughts. One of which consisted of regicide. Given, it took me effort to reset myself and realize the courtesy. "...I think Eliza should like to, before I make an attempt?"

The King narrowed his eyes, but only to correct me. "Yes, Her Majesty," he said. He moved you towards the bed, placing his hand on her arm to wake her up. "Eliza, love," he sang softly. "She's here. Our Princess is here."

She roused, long enough to manage a weak smile and reach for you.

It was a moment of candor, between two people who... on some level still loved each other, and I should not have been so jealous. And so soon after I had let the height in which my heart was soaring at sight of you, to allow my mouth to say the Queen's Christian name to anyone, let alone the King, but.

"—But you will be her detail, of course," the King said. "She must have the best of Blades at all times. She is the root of our future. Do you understand?"

"Aye, Your Majesty," I said, though I was not certain what I had agreed to. It was a happy moment and a happy thing to have you. The end of February had never been more beautiful, and all was well.

You had come out exactly as I had both feared and prayed you would. I felt... safely nestled in God's hand, in His plan. I had no doubt that Eliza and I could forever stay in this high, either. Our own, strange, but necessary means towards a very Happily Ever After, like the ones I had seen in my favorite books.

"...But you didn't ...You didn't stay in an Happily Ever After! She died. She killed herself! She left you? Us? My father. She left all of us!" Svana cried.

"Yes," I noted.

Her words struck me, though she did not mean for them to. Her anger was meant for her mother, not anyone else, but that misplaced fire was another trait of my Eliza's that her mirror sometimes gleamed back at me.

"How could she have done that to you?" Svana huffed. I could see her jaw lock. Now the fiery Eisson fury boiling beneath her surface. "After everything you did. Everything you said. You–?"

"Svana," I buzzed. "It is a thing of the past."

"No!" she spat. "No, it's not in the past, it still hurts us every day. I should be very angry. Perhaps for the rest of my life!"

"No. You should be—"

"You should be very angry! Yet you still speak so highly of her! Why! How?"

"I remain; I only possess good things to say of your mother," I said.

"She hurt you!" she declared. "She hurt me! And so heinously so! She's hurt all of us. All three of my children, who will never know their grandmother. How could she find herself able to even consi–?"

"—Yes. It hurts because we love her so very much. Even the idea of her, as it lives on far beyond her years. That is the mark of a strong woman."

"Ha!" she spat. "A selfish woman, you mean?"

"The thing about Eliza," I canted my head, looking out the window, hoping I could explain the things I'd only ever felt, but never put to words before. "Is that she was certain of many things. She believed she was very intelligent, and she was, but further than that, she prided herself on her foresight and on her belief that she could predict what could come. Predict people. She did not like to be wrong. She did not like to lose. And she spent so long anticipating everyone else, she never stopped to anticipate herself."

"But what did she lose? As you said it; your life, my life, there's no game!"

"We should have some tea, then we can reconvene for the–"

"No," Svana said. She threw herself back into the rocker and crossed her arms. "I knew this would be sad. I have no right to treat you so... poorly. I'm sorry." She took a deeper breath. Her eyes went to the cradle, then back to me. "Please. Finish your tale. Ignore my outburst."

"Your outburst is warranted, and in good company. I felt very much the same when it was first... discovered. Apologies." I stopped, pressing a pair of fingers to my temple to gather myself.

"Did you...?" She waited at the end of that question, the one I knew she would eventually have asked. "Did you discover her?" she cried.

I drummed my thumb against the back of the chair.

"No. But the rest of this chapter is not a happy one," I said.

"None of them are happy," she said. "This has been the saddest story I've ever been told."

"It's not all bad. Overall it's very happy, I think."

"I think you're mad," she rolled her eyes. "Crazed in your old age. But. If you insist, though I am not confident, I will hear the rest of it."

As I said, February had never been so beautiful...

The trees were alive with frosted ends, and shimmery white blankets of snow thrown over them. If you walked too closely, or clipped a branch, it would shake the flakes down upon you in the most magnificent way. The castle, normally white against the Oreian Mountains, was far pearlier in the season's backdrop. It seemed to constantly reflect light off of it, reanimating the old gothic glow to something more romantic and pure.

And you, Svana, in your royal furs, and fabric-braided crown, were the brightest of features in our lands. Even the beaches of South Áire held no candle to you and your smile. Or your mother's when she held you.

It took more than some convincing for His Majesty to allow you and Eliza out of the fortress for walks around the gardens. 'Everything is dead,' he would say, and I would tell him it was more about the freedom; the exercise; the atmosphere.

Reluctantly, he permitted walks twice a week, for the remainder of Winter with a standing promise to reevaluate in the Spring. However; both Ser Derek, myself and another Knight had to be present at all times, which made privacy an issue, but your safety was taken very seriously.

On one particular day, towards the end of March, or maybe April, when the snow had begun to melt and the roses had started to reemerge, Eliza ventured off the garden rock and vanished around a hedge. I followed after her, but the receding snow made it impossible to track her perfectly. She would take every turn as it came up, and eventually she was lost. Or I was, looking for her. Not truly, I knew my way around the maze by then, but I had no idea where she was within it. I relied on a few solitary footprints in patches here and there to track her down.

I could hear what I thought was Ser Derek and the other sword trekking along another path, and I started to pick up the pace, suddenly aware that without me by her side, she was potentially at risk. I was angry at Her Majesty for doing that to me, so when I discovered her near the pond; giggling, telling you to look at how flustered I was— I was perhaps too harsh.

"Eliza!" I snapped.

"You blades can't move too quick in all that armor, can you?" she awarded me. "Why can't you wear your everyday gear again? It's just a walk." She rolled her eyes at me as I approached, shushing you as you cried.

"Is there a reason for your escape?" I hissed.

"Is there–?" She knit her brows. "As if I would just wander off? To what end?"

"You do plenty of things that leave me wondering 'to what end?' Who's to say this time!"

She scoffed. She tightened your blanket, and faced the water.

"Eliza, we must–"

"I want to leave," she said.

"Fine. Let's find the others and–"

"No," she turned, very calmly. Eerily so. "I ran off because I wish to speak to you. This is likely the only chance we'll have. I want to leave the castle."

"I can convince the King of many things, that is not one of them. We are at war. There are assassination threats, and–"

She nodded, and my thought faded off into the breeze. Once I had lost the end of it, she sighed.

"I don't think I'll be missed," she said.

"By whom, the King? I think you're incorrect in that assess–"

"—Do you?" She was miffed by my response. "Do you listen to our fights? Do you hear the things he says to me?"

"Yes," I nodded. "But you will be missed. And he will not let you take Svana."

"No," but she was oddly determined. "No, unlikely. But we could go. Together. If we were careful about our plan."

"Eliza?" I felt my lips part. "I thought you were happy here?"

She didn't reply.

"You don't want that life," I said. "Not really, anyway."

"Now you know what I want?" she buzzed.

I looked over my shoulder at the sound of moving armor, and led her down towards the bank where we could find a few moments longer out of range.

"Where would we go?" I asked.

"I don't care," she cried. "Anywhere but here. I cannot be here. In that... That man's snare!" She fled a few feet from one side to the other. "I cannot let him touch me. He... I cannot..." She threatened to gag. "He wants another child."

Eliza touched her fingers to her lips, settling.

"Do you?" I asked.

"Do I? You ask me that?" Her face shrank. "Why in all of Oreia, would I want that?"

"Because you have Svana, and she is great. Children can change things," I shrugged. "I understand that fact."

"You accuse me of wanting to lay with him? I'm barely healed from this one and—!"

"I don't accuse you of anything, I–"

"You think I like sleeping with him? You think I enjoy feeling his hands, pawing over me? His murderous, hateful hands? Wondering how long before they strangle me for my misdeeds–" She took a sharp breath. "Children do change things. And Nikolai ordered you to murder a child. And not just the child, as I've found, but his mother, too."

"Who told you this?" I asked.

She scoffed. "I don't know why you've shielded him, and from me. He–"

"—It is of the past," I said. "We are making strides in this war. We are–"

"It makes me sick when he touches me, and you– you ask if I want another creature spawned inside of me, seeded into me— more of him? More of her?"

I gasped, taken aback by the image she had painted, and by what she'd said. I felt bad that you had been the subject of it. Even in your youth, hearing your mother say such things? I worried the effect her words would have.

"You cannot let your disgust with him bleed onto her," I said. Eliza cast her eyes away from me. "...I would never let him hurt you. If you do not want His Majesty to touch you, I will–"

"You'll what?" she said through tears. "You'll what, Gregor? There is nothing you or anybody can do. Not from inside this prison. I want out. I don't belong here."

"Eliza," I sang. "I love you, and I love Svana."

"She's not even yours. She's–"

"She is just as much you as she is His Majesty. And that, that is a beautiful thing."

"Is it? Is it beautiful?" she groaned. "That must be your favorite word. Svana is beautiful! The Queen is beautiful! The sunrise is beautiful! How you can assign it so freely, I do not know."

Neither of us said anything for a moment that hung too thickly in the air.

"Run away with me," she resorted to begging. "Save me. Be my Knight. Take me away from here!"

"I do not even begin to know where to go," I started. "And the amount of planning. The effort. The cost–"

"—Does it not matter that I am scared to be here?" she hissed.

"Is everything alright?" Ser Derek asked, looking down between us from the crest of the hill. I wasn't sure what he had heard. His gaze swept behind him. He was looking for the other Knight. I let go of Her Majesty's arm, unaware that I had grabbed it in the heat of the moment.

The Queen stood straighter. She looked down at you, then back to Ser Derek and then just strolled by him, without so much as a word.

Derek's face did not change as he waited for me to climb the slope. The other Blade met up with her, and he took over her immediate escort as we lagged behind in foggy silence.

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