Aralyn pressed a trembling hand over her chest. "I thought..." she whispered, bowing her head as if the weight of three decades had finally settled on her shoulders.
She still didn’t know how she had fainted when she first saw his face. One mont, there he was: her son, alive, breathing, real... and the next, darkness had claid her. When she awoke, he was gone. He was not in the house... Not by her side.
And when word reached her that he had returned, a fierce longing gripped her heart. She wanted to see him again. To hold him. To finally tell him the truth that had lived like a caged bird inside her for thirty long years.
Thirty years...
Not a single day had passed without her thinking of him. She had imagined what he might look like, how his laughter might sound, whether he would have inherited his father’s smile. She had imagined at least a dozen ways she might break the news to him. She’d played each one out in her mind a thousand tis, hoping one would ease the shock, bridge the gap between mother and son.
And then she’d learned who he had beco.
Her son. A prince. A warrior. A respected man in his household, beloved among the people. He lived modestly, yes, a hostage prince in a small manor, but he had carved out honor with his own hands. He had a wife, a child on the way. A family. A life.
She was so proud of him she thought her heart might burst.
But on her way to et him, she’d overheard the whispers of the maids. Snide giggles. Cutting words.
"Henpecked."
"No man in all of Vaeloria would be such a slave to his wife."
"A warrior on the battlefield, but at ho...Ha! A lapdog."
Their laughter scraped against her ears. How dare they speak of him like that? The image they painted, a fierce warrior undone, diminished by his wife’s hand, was so jarringly different from the proud, strong son she had envisioned that her heart physically ached.
Why? Why would his wife allow such talk?
A man should be known as a leader, the head of his household, not belittled in whispered corridors.
When she had been in love, she had never allowed anyone to dean the man she loved, not once. She had defended him with everything she had.
But Hadrian’s daughter... Lorraine. She allowed it. Perhaps she even reveled in it.
The bitterness had crept in then, quiet and poisonous. She knew the girl had suffered in her father’s ho, everyone knew she did. Perhaps that suffering had twisted into hunger for control. Perhaps she was exacting her power now, through her husband.
The thought stung, and yet she could not push it away. The picture of the laughing maids clung to her like a burr, feeding her doubts.
And when she finally went to their chambers, what did she see?
Her son... her proud, noble, warrior son... walking through the corridors with an armful of delicate nightgowns and undergarnts, muttering under his breath like a man defeated by household chores. His head was slightly bowed, his brows furrowed in concentration, as if ferrying his wife’s silks was so grave mission.
Aralyn had frozen on the spot, aghast.
When she asked what on earth he was doing, he turned to her with a pitiful smile.
"She asked to move her clothes to my room," he said simply.
She could hardly believe her ears.
It was not tradition, never a tradition, for a wife to move into her husband’s chamber. Her chamber was large enough to house a small retinue; what more could she possibly want? And yet, not only had Lorraine insisted on shifting into his room, she’d made him do the moving himself!
Dozens of servants worked in this house. And still, she’d chosen him, her husband, for this task.
Aralyn’s stomach knotted with indignation. What a monster that girl had turned out to be. She had seed so sweet, so docile... but clearly all that trauma had twisted her into an etiquetteless little tyrant.
She wanted to teach the girl her place. But first, she turned to her son.
"You don’t have to do this," she told him gently, placing a hand on his arm.
But Leroy only looked at her, perplexed, almost as if bound by invisible chains. His expression said it all: Lorraine asked it of , so I will do it.
And just then, Lorraine herself appeared, floating into the corridor with an ease that made Aralyn’s blood boil. Careless, unhurried, utterly indifferent to how her husband was struggling. No matter how much the world had changed, so things should not.
A wife should never let her husband stoop to such indignities. She should obey, respect, and walk behind him, not overshadow him.
Aralyn’s resolve hardened. She would have to correct this girl.
But then things... went bad.
Her poor son.
"He was distraught... he was..." Aralyn said to Aldric, her voice thick with confusion. She could still see that mont clearly. "No man would be happy carrying his wife’s undergarnts through the halls. He was unhappy with her, I could see it. I wanted to... tell her that."
Aldric pressed his lips together, suppressing a knowing sigh. Leroy being unhappy with Lorraine wasn’t unheard of, Leroy could grumble like a caged bear when he wanted to, but this?
"Was he muttering under his breath," Aldric asked carefully, "sothing about a porcupine or—"
"Mouse," Aralyn interrupted. "It was mouse... or sothing similar."
"Mouseling," Aldric muttered, covering his face with one hand to hide the smile creeping up. That man.
"Oh, Aralyn..." Aldric finally exhaled. "He might complain like an old man sotis, but trust , it’s not unhappiness."
He had once made the sa mistake himself, hearing Leroy call Lorraine nas that sounded anything but tender. But he had learned: those little grumbles, those ridiculous pet nas, were Leroy’s way of expressing an affection he rarely showed in public. An affection that belonged only to her.
It was understandable that Aralyn had misunderstood. She was seeing through the lens of tradition, not love. And it was her own love for her son that clouded it.
-----
"Aralyn is your mother," Lorraine said, again.
Leroy was leaning on the headboard of her bed, silent and still, Lorraine didn’t know what he was thinking.
It scared her. His silence... scared her.
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