There was a battle in her. Aram was not so blind as to ignore it entirely, yet he feared no words of his could assuage these feelings. There was a part of her heart, a piece of her mind, forever closed off to him. Aram did not like to accept this, but he could not deny it. He prayed that in time this might change, but he knew - were their situations reversed - he could not so easily forgive the family who had seen his own cast down.
“Perhaps-” Aram glanced away, sweeping a swift gaze over the dotted lights of Arvor. “Perhaps other arrangements could still be made to make you more comfortable. This palace should be the birth place of the next Emperor - the Hall of the Ancestors should be the spot - but I know that is not where you are comfortable. Perhaps your own palace on Arvor might be a better place. I could have more plants and other items brought in from Vaane to make whichever chamber - or all of them - there you might choose more suitable to your sensibilities. Your sisters could all be with you, your Vaanish friends, whomsoever you might like…There are more guards I could put around you to keep you safe…I am certain we can reach an arrangement, Caressa, that will suit us all.”
Aram did not realize that, to her ears, any part of this suggestion might sound like an assassination attempt. His true aim was a compromise. He imagined facing down something so momentous as a birth had to be trying under the best of circumstances and these, he well knew, were hardly the best of circumstances.
“I’m certain it would set your sisters’ weary minds at ease to be with you, wherever the birth might take place. If you like, I will invite them first thing tomorrow. And they need see but little of me, if they so wish. There are rooms enough to accommodate an empress, a queen, and a princess there, I am sure, for however long you might wish them with you. There is nothing so urgent on Vaane that it cannot be administered to from Arvor.”
There was a pregnant pause between her words as she spoke of Vaane. It seemed to cloy in the air between them and then there was that familiar flicker in her face, perhaps some longing, something left unsaid. Aram felt a grateful swell, at times like these, that she forbore. He knew that creeping assurance that it would have been something he did not like.
It was not conviction in her tone when she accepted his terms, however, but resignation. He would make it up to her, now. He had his chance, by her own admission, to prove to her now how things could be different. This time, he would take every precaution: he would not fail her or their child.
Drawing close to her, Aram Quasar took her face in his hands. Her cheeks were soft, her throat tender under his calloused hands. Caressa’s face tilted up towards him, and the heat of the torches cast its warm glow across her luminous face. He longed to bend and kiss her, his lips to hers. His wife was beautiful and warm and so close within his reach he could almost call her his own. Her blue eyes, tinged with green, were fixed on his, her hair soft curls that brushed his fingertips. He could steal her kiss now, he knew. But she was free: she had never belonged to anyone, and never less so to anyone than to him. Aram touched his lips briefly to her brow and released her. He turned back to his city and rested his hands on the balcony’s rails. Caressa would never want him.
“Our son will never be safer anywhere than he is here,” he promised. His voice had gone low and soft in the quiet as he scanned the river that looped across the horizon. “And neither will you be, my Empress.” He turned grey eyes back on her once again. “I swear it.”
For a moment, he’d managed to surprise her.
Ressa had never known her husband to be a man who would compromise (certainly not when it came to something so sacred to him as the birth of his son: the future emperor of Velorum Nocate) and yet, here was he was, offering to adjust his plans (the ancestor’s plans!) for her comfort.
“Aram?” She spoke his name softly, wondering if she’d truly heard him ... wondering if it had only been want she’d wanted to hear, “Do you mean that?”
He’d painted her a lovely picture. The palace he had given her was beautiful and while it was far from being home, it was the closest thing to it that Arvor could ever boast. To be there - away from the chaos and horrors of this place - with her sisters while her child was born would be the next best thing to being on Vaane.
It took her only another moment, to work out what he might have gained from this plan. He would have to give up having his son born in the Hall of the Ancestors, but he could easily wipe out House Harand in a single attempt. They would all be together, out of the way of the public eye where no one would see what really happened. House Harand would no longer pose a threat and Vaane would be his for the taking.
She felt sick that she had, even more a moment, believed him. That she’d almost blindly agreed to his trap. She took comfort in the fact that Arantha never would have agreed to it: that she would have seen through it from the start.
Ressa looked away again, away from him, out towards the sprawling city. She did not want him to see her face, “Arantha cannot leave home. She would if I asked her, but ... a Queen’s place is with her people.” Even Aram, she thought, could not object to that.
She turned back towards him, “But if you meant what you said, I would rather be there ... at my Arvorian palace.” If she must die, she would rather it happen at there, where at least there were whispers of home.
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