But it had been so long since he’d last heard Queen Eithelenidrel sing. The half-Elf was standing on a tower of the castle that had a view to his window. Her hair was pale red, even if it had begun to gray…far faster than it should. She was singing with a voice to rouse the entire city.
Eithelenidrel, his consort, the half-Elven Queen of Erribathe, the immortal side to the throne, had sung in his capital exactly three times before this. Over two hundred years they had been wed.
The key moment had been when the [King of Men] had finally realized that he’d never sway, convince, or charm Eithelenidrel into necessarily loving him. And that the pact between them was a pact. She had honored it for her people, and he hadn’t realized how much she’d given up.
He’d given her back one of those things, at least in part. Eithelenidrel stayed in the Grovelands and seldom emerged. Not for most royal events; not that Erribathe had many that were annual. It was one of the Restful Three, a nation without need nor complaint.
Eithelenidrel stayed with her people and only came to visit when it was her inclination or at great need. Then she was more like an old friend, and she’d begun to come by with complaints. Or write that her people wanted copies of plays or whatnot.
She was eating a traditional half-Elven dish: a salad. Eithelenidrel was one of those half-Elves who’d forsworn meat. Her salad was made up of flowers, which she was eating petal by petal.
Their son was dead. Eithelenidrel looked at him, and he again saw those tears he’d seen behind her gaze. But she determinedly chewed on another flower petal.
A younger, more foolish man would have taken Eithelenidrel’s words as her coping with her grief in her own way and left it at that. The older man realized the words were twice bitter.
That was why Nuvityn sometimes had it appended to his royal titles, much to Eithelenidrel’s exasperation. Because it made him, well, unique compared to his father, who’d also been a decent ruler and lived three hundred damned years, or his grandfather, who’d lived nearly five hundred.
Someone had been talking to him. Eithelenidrel glanced at Nuvityn, and for once, she was the one talking and he was the silent one not paying attention.
In Eithelenidrel’s case, she would have rather eaten a whole pork roast each morning than taken the throne. Nuvityn spoke out of the corner of his mouth, wrenching his mind off of…well, anything but reality.
