The Final Straw
It had been nearly a half year since the good king had returned to what remained of his land and his wife, only to find one decimated and the other in the arms of a particularly irritating clock. Acheonickolas liked to consider himself a patient sort, one who balanced out his wife’s fits and kept general peace in the land they’d once commanded. However, things had come over a bit tense as of late. Everyone had their limits, and though the king had agreed to his wife’s wish to be shared between Time and himself, he wasn’t entirely happy about it.
He wanted Iracebeth to be happy, of course, or as close as she could come. But he wasn’t keen on sharing the woman he had been married to for the better part of three centuries. And just who was this demi-god, suggesting such a thing? As if it weren’t enough that the scriptures strictly forbade it, he would have thought that his heart suffered enough. First the infatuation with that roguish knave, and now this Northern idiot had swept his loving heart off her feet. He felt rather marginalized, really.
Although, he had come to realize that this wasn’t exactly the lady he had married. He still loved her, of course. Little could change that. But the woman he now laid with was kinder, a bit softer spoken. She still had temper tantrums, but they didn’t last as long, and she could occasionally stop them herself beforehand.
When she came to him that evening and told him in that strangely meek, apologetic voice that she was with child, he’d been elated. Another little pair of feet pattering down the halls! Yes, they were a bit old for it, but his children were his pride and joy, and just what the two needed. Something to snap her out of whatever silly little crush she had on Time so they might be together again, just the two of them.
He'd thought that, of course, until she stopped him with one simple phrase. “I don’t know if it’s yours.”
Of course he knew that she lay with the strangely Northern clock, though he preferred not to dwell on it. They did have ten little ones between them for a reason. But they both knew damned well that an Underlandian child could only be conceived when a true bond of love was shared between the parents. The scriptures definitively said so.
The large man’s hands had clenched into fists and he had closed his eyes.
“Iracebeth. Open the portal to his realm.”
It had been centuries since the Red Queen had seen her Nick angry. Not since that dreadful disaster of a coronation, in her own memory. Even on the day that was to be his execution, he’d only acted with weary resignation. His anger frightened her, because she didn’t know what to expect of it. Warily, she wagered a warning.
“Nick… I don’t think…”
“Iracebeth! Darling!” He heaved a deep breath, a slightly mad smile on his lips, “I beg you. I need to speak with him. Man to man.”
Her brown eyes wide with the closest thing she had to fear, she did as he asked, allowing the pair into the cool, foggy plane that the clock inhabited.
@themadandthebroken