In Which Laralita Is Barred from the Beautiful Place

May 1, 1174

This had once been her bedroom. This had been her bed, her hearth, her poorly-placed stain-glass window. She'd lost her maidenhood in that bed. She'd conceived three children in that bed and birthed two of them there as well. She'd slept in that bed every night for eight years.

The night after the last, she'd tucked her boys into that bed. The baby had fallen asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, as always. Little Piglet had been more difficult. He'd fidgeted and kicked off the blankets and stared up at her after she'd finished singing his lullaby, asking why he had to go to bed when she didn't. She'd told him she would be joining them in a few minutes, that she was just craving a biscuit and would be dashing down to the kitchen. He'd asked if he could have a biscuit too. She'd scolded him, but told him she'd bring him one.

She did go down to the kitchen that night. She did eat her biscuit, and she did grab a second one for him. She'd made her way through the castle, fully intent on returning to the bedroom and indulging her naughty little child with sweets he shouldn't have been having just before bed. But she'd ended up in the stables instead. She'd been three hours away before she'd remembered the biscuit in her cloak pocket.

The room hadn't changed much--only its occupants. Searle and Ren sat by the fire, on the rug instead of on the couch, quiet after all those hours of intermittent moaning and gasping and the headboard banging against the wall. They were touching, leaning against each other, fondling each other's hair like Laralita and Karlspan had never done. It was nice to see love in this room. They made it seem like a beautiful place, even in their shameless post-coital calm.

"Searle. Ren."

Ren paid her the briefest glance before turning her eyes back to the fire, but Searle's gaze lingered, half-obscured by his wife's forearm. She couldn't see his mouth; just one dark blue eye, unblinking, unwavering, unforgiving. "Mother."

He didn't ask why she'd come, but she felt inclined to answer anyway. "I just wanted to see how you were feeling."

Searle sniffed. "Fine, thanks to your friend."

Talking to Searle had been so difficult when he'd visited Naroni, but she'd learned the trick since then. She saw it with her stepson and his wife every time they spoke. It wasn't what they said. It was what they didn't say. "Searle..."

"I take it you're here for my gratitude?" The accusation left a sting far worse than any hive her brothers had knocked down back in the day. Laralita froze. Searle seemed to take that as a 'yes'. "Then you may have it. Thank you for bringing him here. There--you can leave now."

She didn't move. Every word out of his mouth was an arrow and she was a bright red target, but Searle wasn't the only one with things to say. "I'm sorry."

Ren's grasp tightened; meanwhile, Searle closed his eyes and sighed. "Are you?"

Laralita dug the nail of her thumb into the flesh of her palm. She hated blood and scratches and uneven fingernails, but somehow it was easy to forget that. "What do you mean?"

"You're Queen of Naroni. You married the love of your life. You have a hoard of children who are all more exciting and sociable and beautiful than bland, reclusive, ugly old me. You have a new life and you find it preferable to the one you had with Ietrin and me. You're not sorry at all."

But it was so much more complicated than that! Yes, she loved Roderick. Yes, she loved her children with Roderick. And oh hell yes, she loved being queen. But she loved Searle and Ietrin too. Why didn't Searle see that? "But I am."

"Pardon my skepticism, but I doubt that."

This had been uncomfortable from the beginning, but it was crossing the line into the realm of the unbearable. Laralita tugged at her braid--something she'd never done in her life. "I never meant to leave you."

"But you did anyway."

The phrase was a door slammed shut in her face. She could try jiggling the handle, but she had a feeling it was locked from the other side. "Forgive me?"

Searle said nothing. Laralita wasn't a clever woman and she knew it, but the obvious answer hung in the silence and she couldn't have missed it. "You won't."

His lip curling inward, Searle turned away from her and stared into the imaginary depths of the dancing flames. "I can't."

The room was no longer such a beautiful place. There might have been love here, but it was shaded by something else. Something darker, something heavier, something that took hold of the sides of her heart and slowly tore them to the sides. She couldn't look at him like this, all distant and untouchable and aloof. "I see. Goodnight, Piglet."

"I thought I told you never to call me that again."

"My apologies." She turned around and crossed the same old floorboards to the same old door, stepping out into the same old hallway and pushing it back to the same old frame. She leaned back against the same old wall and listened. Searle might insult her behind her back. Ren might break her silence and rant. Little Karlspan might toddle in from the nursery and ask for another bedtime story.

But the only thing she heard was a muffled sob.

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