William. Castle Randal Walking the familiar corridors of the castle did not have the same feeling as it once did. Years ago, when he was small, William would follow at his father's heels into the throne room to greet the king and queen and the princes and the princess. He and Derrick and Garratt and his brothers would race around the passages until the king's guards caught them. He'd walked many a private corridor with Derrick or Aliana or both, in counsel or in comfort or simply because they had asked. Now, the halls seemed quieter. They were certainly less welcoming. William had seen nothing of Aliana in the three weeks since Garratt's execution. The castle had remained mostly dark in the queen's silence. He had taken to overseeing the training of new knights and riding the grounds by himself. Cold air in his lungs made him feel more alive. On a cold night just before the New Year, one of the queen's guards came to summon him to the throne room. The sun had gone down hours before, and the corridors of the castle were shadowy with dusk beyond the high windows. In truth, the shadows reflected William's mood. The execution had taken the wind out of him and out of most of the castle. It had been necessary, and it had been the right decision, of that much he was sure. But that did not eliminate the truth of the matter, the fact of what it was. He had seen the ashen tone Aliana's skin took as the executioner raised his axe above her brother's neck, the way the light had gone out of her eyes days earlier when she passed down his sentence. Her absence from court seemed to indicate it had not returned. With the mood of the queen so went the court. The guard brought him to the entrance to the throne room. "Her Grace will see you within, my lord," he bowed to William before disappearing. William pushed the great oak door open and found the throne room still mostly dark, a few candles lit near the door and near the throne. In the shadows, he saw Aliana's silhouette on the throne, upright as if she were hearing petitions. He drew closer, only to find that her silhouette had been an illusion, a mirage of how she had once looked. Now, Aliana seemed gaunt, her skin shimmering ghostly white in the candlelight, almost a sickly pale color. She wore a dress of gray wool trimmed in ermine, and it seemed to swallow her up. Her hair, the luxurious dark locks in which he'd buried his hands in passion, hung limply over her shoulders. She looked at him when she heard him enter. Her gaze did not falter as he silently approached. "Your Grace," William greeted her, falling to one knee before the throne, eyes fixed on the hem of her gown where it swept the floor. He lingered for a few long moments. The queen said nothing. At last, he looked up at her and found her watching him with silent reverence, her brown eyes glassy. "You summoned me," William reminded her plainly. He remained where he knelt. Finally, Aliana spoke. "I am in need of your counsel." Her voice shattered William's resolve, remembering the way she'd so forcefully insisted I do not have to listen to you only weeks earlier. There was nothing forceful about her voice now. He rose, halfway through extending a hand to comfort her before remembering his place and withdrawing. He had never heard her so broken, her voice so weak and rough, not even when Derrick died. "I am here to serve Your Grace, as ever," William told her, bowing his head to her as if to make up for the breach of etiquette. When she sat the throne, even she would not insist on informality as she so often did when they were alone or in small company. Aliana tightened her fingers on the arms of the great throne and pushed herself to stand. "Walk with me," she commanded, and William fell into pace behind her as she began toward the long gallery at the windowed side of throne room. "With me, not behind me." William took a large stride to catch up, and walked parallel to the queen, the heavy wool of her skirt brushing his boots every few steps. They walked in silence past the first few windows along the gallery, keeping a slow but steady pace. At last, Aliana asked, "What do you advise, if a queen should no longer wish to be queen?" The question caught William off-guard, and he felt his heart anxiously quicken. "A queen would have to abdicate, Your Grace," he told her. It was a process on which he knew she had been educated, and it felt strange to remind her of the laws of the monarchy. "Yes," Aliana said in understanding. She was looking out the windows they passed, and between them at the floor; never once at William. "And if her heirs should prove unsavory kings, what then?" William watched Aliana intently, even as she avoided his eyes. He spoke the laws of the court, age-old precedent, and still he felt as if he might speak out of turn, even with plain truths. "The queen may name her chosen and fit heir, as your brother named Your Grace. She might also name a regent, until such a time as a suitable heir presents himself." "Yes, that would be an option," Aliana confirmed. Shafts of moonlight cut through the high windows, occasionally casting light across Aliana's tired features. William wondered when was the last time she'd slept through the night. They had reached the end of the gallery, and Aliana turned to cross the room back toward the throne. William kept pace with her as they crossed through the semidarkness in shafts of moon and candlelight. He found that her pace slowed with each passing moment, until they were nearly stationary, a few long strides from her throne. "Is something troubling Your Grace?" She had her back to him, her slim shoulders appearing even slimmer beneath the heavy winter dress and her mass of limp hair. William reached out to touch her, fingers barely reaching the back of one shoulder when she turned around. Her eyes were rimmed red. "Aliana," he rushed at her, making as if to touch her arm. The queen stopped him with a hand against his chest. "I cannot do this, not anymore," Aliana said. Her words were remarkably assured despite her apparent frailty. She looked up to meet his eyes. "I was never meant to be queen, William, you know that as well as anyone." William hardly believed what was coming from her lips. "But Derrick declared..." "An order given to protect his crown, nothing more," Aliana interrupted him. "He was scared of what might come, you know that. He had every intention of taking a wife when his throne was secure, and siring a true heir." "You were his true heir," he counseled her, passionately and almost angrily. The queen's brown eyes were dark with fear. "You, and nobody else. No son that had yet to be, no other. I knew him as well as you, Aliana, and he meant every word when he promised to leave his crown to you." The queen was silent for a long time, looking away from William at the ground between them. He felt every heartbeat against his ribcage, shaken by what she had said. Finally, Aliana said, "I killed his true heir." When she looked up, misty-eyed and shaking, William felt the pit of his stomach clench both angrily and pitifully. He knew what she meant. He remembered Garratt's face on the executioner's block, the look in the queen's eyes when the axe rose and fell, the way she seemed to pale with each step of her brother's boots up the scaffold. "You did the right thing." "Did I?" William did not answer. He looked at her carefully, as if she might crumble under the wrong gaze, or he might lose himself if he caught a glimpse of her in too weak a moment. He closed his hand around her upper arm. When she did not protest, William pulled her closer, wrapping both his arms around her. At once he knew for sure that she was not all in body that she had been. After a few long moments, he heard Aliana speak, her voice muffled beyond understanding against his chest. William withdrew, and looked at her questioningly. Quietly, Aliana repeated, "I mean to abdicate. I wanted your approval." "My approval?" William stepped back from her, almost amused. "Aliana, you need nothing from me to do as you believe is the proper course." He realized how chastising it sounded, and drew closer again, speaking more softly but firmly, "I cannot say I agree. But if you believe in it, I give you my blessing if that is what you seek." Aliana looked him up and down, quiet, and then retreated the few steps back to the throne, sitting upon it. The great chair dwarfed her, the ornate bronze carvings at its back shimmering in the candle and moonlight and casting an eerily warm glow around her shoulders. "I will have to name my successor," Aliana said bluntly. William approached the throne and stood before her in the pool of light the candles around her provided. "The most viable Randals are distant cousins of yours," William reminded her. Her depressive swing seemed to have dissolved, and he stood before her as a lord of the privy council more than a friend for comfort. Aliana seemed to ponder his words only briefly before responding, "He must be of my blood, but he need not be a Randal." It sounded as if she had rehearsed it, though she looked hardly comfortable enough on her throne for him to believe it. "You cannot possibly mean your uncles," William said of the late Queen Rosamond's haughty Varenese brothers. "This is Castle Randal, you are a Randal. It ought to be not just your blood, but your father's also." Aliana smiled then, though it was more of a smirk. "I see he who did not want to be my councilman suddenly has a voice," she said, almost laughing at herself. Her chuckles died quickly, and the queen went silent once more, eyes diverted. Her silence gave William leave to think at length. Aliana wishes to abdicate. The thought tasted bitter in his mouth, an aftertaste from giving her his blessing for such folly. He knew how Garratt's death had shaken her, and he supposed he could not blame her for wanting something better for her father's people than a queen who put her own kin to the executioner's axe. But if not her... "You must name someone Derrick would trust," William told her. It sounded much like a command, but Aliana did not seem to mind. She met his eyes briefly and then nodded. "I would not dream of doing otherwise," Aliana assured him, voice oddly quiet and emotive. William drew closer to her to hear her better, lest he miss anything. The entire affair put him ill at ease. He watched as Aliana looked to the ground again, small hands grasping the carved arms of her throne. Ansell's signet ring shimmered blue in the light of the candles, a few reflections off the sapphire dancing on the floor across the throne room. The queen was still looking at the floor when she said, "If the kings after me should be of my own blood, then I am of a mind to name a man to the kingship who would be the father of my children. They would be Randals as much as Derrick's children who never came to be, in all but name." William's face fell, and he looked upon her with something more like concern. He knew Aliana's deepest torment, at least before executing Garratt. He remembered the sad look in Derrick's eyes when he recounted what the old healer at Tyron's Keep had told him. She may never bear children. It is for the gods to decide. And he remembered all the times he'd very nearly prayed for her to live with that burden. He tried to choose his words carefully, to couch them in less final terms. "Aliana, you cannot do as Derrick did, and rely on children who may never..." "Did I say they would never be?" Aliana asked plainly, looking up at him at last. Her eyes were glassy again, though her voice did not yet bear the quake of great emotion. He considered her words, and was halfway into preparing a speech to remind her of her barrenness when he met her eyes again. They glowed like dark copper in the candlelight, and he looked deeper. Suddenly, he knew. William stepped back and fell to his knees before the throne. He could almost feel the warmth of her bare skin on his hands even now, the rain-dampened waves of her hair, the brush of her hand against him. It surged back through his veins like lightning and he shivered, remembering. "How long have you known?" he asked her, heart rattling his very bones with its quickened pace. "Less than a moon's turn," Aliana answered, tone quiet and simple. "I wanted to be sure, I...I had to be sure." William looked up at her, sitting above him from her throne, seeming so small and frail that he hardly believed what she said. Even at her worst, though, Aliana had never lied to him. He rose then and walked toward her, taking her hands in his own. She did not stand, and he could feel her hands shaking when she spoke. "Will you, then?" William looked down at her quizzically, hardly remembering what she had asked, if she had asked anything. Aliana spoke softly, "They are yours. The child and the kingdom both, if you would have the latter." She paused, tightening her hold on his fingers. "The child is yours regardless of your title, and he will be the king no matter what." "Are you sure, Aliana?" he asked her, not straying from her brown-eyed gaze. He had to see her surety for himself. Aliana stood, William's hands her leverage, and spoke quietly but firmly. "There is only one person to whom Derrick would have given his kingdom, if not me. In fact, he very much did. And I agree with him." She paused and pulled one hand away, laying it instead along William's cheek. Her palm was still cold and shaking. "You are the queen, Aliana, as you ought to be," William reminded her, but leaning into the touch of her hand against his face. "I would stand beside you if you'll have me, but no more." Aliana lowered her hand to take his again. "The only queen I wish to be is yours," she said. "I know they may not have advised me to it, but Derrick and my father before him would have rested easy knowing it would be you to succeed them. You were as a brother to mine, and you have been as a part of this family." The queen pulled one of his hands closer, pressing his palm against her stomach. "You are a part of this family, and the one best suited to lead it." "I am no king," William told her, though he found his eyes transfixed by his own hand against her, on the flatness of her stomach that would soon grow round and great with child. We have made a king together. And she wishes to make another king, this very moment. William fell to his knees again, this time at her feet. He held her by the hips with both hands, and rested his forehead against her abdomen. Quietly, intimately, he said, "I am no king, but I will try to be one worthy of you, little one." He felt Aliana's hands touch his head and hold him closer, his face buried in the wool of her dress, in the softness of her body. Finally, William stood, taking her in his arms. My queen. "It's a boy," he said unthinkingly, his voice muffled in Aliana's hair, eyes closed. "His name is Derrick." "I know," Aliana replied gently, prophesying that which neither of them could truly foretell. "King Derrick Ingraham." William's chest clenched and he held her tighter against him. He could have sworn he felt the child's as yet imperceptible heartbeat against his hip where its mother's abdomen pressed, could feel the cosmos spread out before that tiny quietly beating heart, stretching farther than its namesake ever got in his own time in his world. "He would be proud of such a nephew," Aliana said, voice cracking as she spoke of her brother. "He would be so happy, happier even than I, to know his nephew will be his legacy." William withdrew and looked at her closely, taking her face in his hands and murmuring, "He already has a legacy." Tears had slipped onto each of her cheeks, and William leaned in to kiss both away. He hesitated for a brief moment, but the little heart between them made him bold and he kissed her lips, too, deeper than he had ever before dared, even in moments of passion. Aliana encouraged him, opening her mouth to his and burying her fingers in the fabric of his tunic. When they broke apart, she was out of breath, and William gathered her in his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin and glad to feel her stomach pressed against him again. King Derrick Ingraham. Aliana's breath eventually slowed, hot against his chest, and then he heard her speak. "I love you," she said, even and light. "I love you," she said again, and William felt her hands tighten in the sides of his shirt. He had not placed much importance in the kind of words she spoke, not until then. She had told him years ago that she trusted him with her life, that she had faith in his judgment, that she knew he would not fail her, but never that she loved him. It felt like something he ought to have known, and perhaps did, but had not believed until she said it aloud. William pulled back to look at her, seeing an expression of relief on her face, as if her burdens had been lifted. Wordlessly, he knelt before her again, taking her hands in his. He looked up at Aliana from below, at how the moonlight in the room made her glow around the edges. At last, he spoke. "I love you," he said, meeting her eyes with a smile. Looking away, he focused again on her abdomen, slipping both arms around her and hugging her close, face buried against her body. "I love you," he repeated, hot behind his eyes. Again he said, "I love you," enunciating each word and feeling the fabric of Aliana's dress against his lips, as if trying to reach the little heart he knew was buried somewhere beneath it.