ACT II

Your sleep was fitful, yet the dream was so complete and all consuming when you finally pulled your eyelids open and looked up at the darkness surrounding you, your reality shifted and fractured as the memories came back to you.

Your face, the pillow, and the collar of your nightshirt were all soaked with tears and as you blinked again, trying to find some light inside this place that would give you a sense of bearing you found nothing but pain.

The reality that hit you in the face was offensive.

He was dead.

The man you loved with every bit of your existence for such a maddeningly short amount of time, was gone and you were left to somehow continue on with this life without him.

The memories were changing as they flew. A flock of sparrows, each moving quicker than the last, you reached through your mind to catch them and hold on. Yet with each new one you frantically grasped, another flew by, threatening to escape completely until the feeling of his fingers along your skin, the touch of his lips against your birthmark, the sound of his voice as he whispered into your ear, and the vibration of his laughter along your neck, were all gone forever. Everything about him you wanted so desperately to hold on too moved too fast and the threat of losing it all made more tears fall as you wept into your bed.

Your bed…

Your fingers trailed along the rough fabric. A stiff mattress filled with straw below you, somehow simultaneously familiar and foreign...why was this your resting space?

Why was this darkness so consuming and why couldn't you quite remember the sequence of events from the night before that would have resulted in you ending up in a bed such as this, and in a room as dark as this one.

The commander’s face flashed through your mind, like a phantom with piercing eyes and lips that called out to you in that voice, only the longer you dwelled on your surroundings the weaker his essence became.

Would you lose this too? Would you lose his eyes? His face? The straight black hair that blew in the wind when he held onto the wheel of that strange vehicle, while sounds from spaces far away spoke to him in garbled staticky sounds.

Your stomach lurched when you sat up, sending a wave of nausea through your body that covered your head in a sick green, making your dark room spin. You recognized the way your mouth watered, and leapt from your bed, suddenly more familiar with your surroundings as you found your nightstand and the small empty wash basin you kept there at night. You’d made it just in time for your dinner to make a reappearance and you vomited until the all consuming waves quieted down.

How many nights had it been now, since the nausea had taken you in the early morning hours before the sun had even dared to show it’s face.

You coughed hard, trying to rid yourself of the acrid taste at the back of your throat and on shaking hands and knees, crawled back to the wooden table that sat beside your bed. Back to the cup of water you knew you would find there.

You didn’t dare give a name to the reason for your current sickness, even if deep down inside your belly, your hand often found a place to lightly rest, and pat reassuring words to whoever might be listening in there. Memories flooded through your mind's eye of the commander and his love filling you mere hours before he was stolen from you. The vision of his pretty face and those eyes that he promised you would see again. The irony in his words, would you only see him again through the generation he must have blessed your body with?

You shook at your head. Your reality and that ghost in your dream were dueling for your attention. Both screaming that one was true and the other making the same claims. Yet here you say, firmly rooted in your darkened reality with a very real basin of sick that needed to be taken care of.

You heard the soft knock on your door, seconds before the creek of the wood opening and a housemaid peaked her head inside, the candle in her hands illuminating her face and casting deep shadows over her features.

“Are you okay miss?” The reverence was clear in her voice when she addressed you and you were sure she suspected what you also knew. Especially since you had yet to ask for your monthly napkins.

“I’m fine, I’ve just had a bad dream,” you struggled to calm your breathing and she entered the room cautiously, bringing the light with her that you had searched so frantically for earlier.

The more you thought about it, the stranger that dream really had been. Weird gadgets that could produce their own light without fire. Loud popping weapons that were capable to causing so much pain and destruction, yet small enough to hold in the palm of a hand. Voices coming from small boxes wired to even bigger boxes on wheels that could move faster than a horse and a carriage, and didn't even need to be pulled by anything at all.

The visions of the dream were fading fast and his face that smiled back at you struck you with just how odd he looked out of his usual clothes, wearing such a drab green color that blended in with the forestry behind him.

The tears you felt, now dried on your cheeks, the emotions you felt, so strong and devastating when it happened, now seemed almost silly to you when you thought about it.

Him -- dead? You'd just spend the night in his bed with his hands lovingly caressing your face as he filled your head with promises of his never ending love. The memory of his desperate lips erased the pain you woke up with and brought on a warmth that spread right through your chest down into your belly.

Despite the dim lighting you still caught the glance she made at your hand that rested there.

“The king requests your presence at breakfast. Shall I tell him you are ill?”

“Absolutely not. If my king requests me, I will be there.” You voiced your confidence, with just a bit of hoarseness left over from the early morning retching and she lowered the candle a touch as she leaned in closer.

“You know he would be most pleased.” Of course she knew. She was with you nearly constantly these last months and although you tried not to get too attached to the maids, this one was softer than the others. This one seemed better at reading you than some of the others.

“Not yet,” you shook your head, recognizing the delicate nature of such things. You also recognized the very real threats that surrounded you at all times. “Not with her still in the castle.”

“Of course,” the maid bowed once and dropped her eyes, turned to set her candle down on a surface by the door and left.

You had at least an hour before the sun would rise, yet the tightness in your chest, leftover from your dream pulled at you hard.

You needed to see him with your own eyes. The commander was fading now and your king was calling to you.

In the dim candlelight you could make out the inner contents of your wardrobe and you slipped on the silk overcoat he had gifted to you. It was red and much too luxurious of an item to be of any practical use at all, but you like the way it felt against your skin as you wore it around your chambers.

The corridors were mostly empty. Servants scurrying way as you passed, no one bothered to stop you any more. Not when you walked these halls to his room like you belonged there always. In fact there was usually only one person in this entire palace who dared have an opinion on who’s room you visited at night, and she was nothing more than a filthy gnat buzzing around your head. A political pawn who weaseled her way into a marriage with a king who could never love her.

Not the way he loved you.

You wouldn't think of her today. You were going to see his face and he would be alive and breathing and watching you with those intense eyes, like only he could.

He wasn't expecting you yet. He had called for you to join him for breakfast yet here you stood, hand braced to knock hours before the dawn, the pull against your heart too strong to resist.

You knocked twice, lightly enough that if he had been asleep, it should not have disturbed him.

You heard no sound from within the room and pushed the heavy wooden door open slowly, entering the forechamber of his private room. The final space visitors were allowed to enter unless expressly invited in by the king himself.

There was a stillness in this room. A clean quiet that usually coated you from head to toe as you made your way inside, but somehow in the dark before the dawn, the silence felt magnified.

Your body seemed to be making too much noise for such a sacred space and you slowed your breathing as you stepped beyond the threshold toward where you knew his bed would be found.

The moon shone through the big picture windows, painting the entire room in a blue faint glow that your eyes adjusted to nearly instantly.

You could make out the shape of him in his bed, curled up with thick down blankets gripped tightly within his arms, eyes closed, lips parted as he breathed and that blue glow illuminating the clarity of his skin. Dark eyebrows, dark eyelashes, dark hair in stark contrast and in perfect proportion to his pretty face.

The man was breathtaking. In fact you had to lay a hand over your mouth to keep your gasp contained as you watched the steady rise and fall of his chest. He was alive and so beautiful. Alive and breathing. Alive and as real as the memories that danced through your mind.

You had to touch him. Your fingers craved the warmth you hoped you would find in his skin.

Your hand, against his face, trailing lightly along his cheekbones as he spoke to you for the last time, a wet hot sticky red marking his perfect features that screwed together in pain as he told you he would see you again. Told you not to cry. Asked you to kiss him goodbye.

Your mind must have still wanted to play tricks on you, for he was not injured. He merely slept, ready to be awoken as proof that he was unharmed, yet the wetness you felt in your eyes did not listen. The tears that ran down your face, stopped up your nose, made your head ache and your heart hurt as if you had been the one shot, all of these emotions that coursed through you with the memory that felt too real to discount. They were too strong.

By the time your fingertips reached his face, they were trembling, and when you felt the softness of his warm skin you choked out a quiet sob.

He was safe. He was alive and he was safe. Maybe you couldn't save the commander at the time, but you were looking at his face and touching his skin, your king was safe.

The touch on his face pulled his eyes open and only seconds passed as he stared at your face, a sleepy sort of confusion on his features, before a widening hit those eyes and alarm took over.

“What is it? What has happened?” His voice was thick with sleep and your tears flowed too freely for you to stop them now. The dams had already burst and your face screwed together as you shook your head, recognizing that you were now crying openly in front of him after startling him awake.

The king. Your king, and you, nothing more than a concubine of his, dared to enter his bed chamber and wake him well before you were supposed to meet with him...because you had a bad dream and had temporarily lost your mind.

You felt beside yourself. As if you were watching yourself behaving in such a preposterous way from the outside. Unable to stop, and even less able to comprehend what could have possibly possessed you to do this.

“I’m sorry...I don’t k-know what has come over me,” you struggled with making your words comprehensible through the sobs that raged inside your chest and strong hands gripped around your arms as those eyes tried to reach yours, which you now tried desperately to evade.

You had made a mistake. You had forgotten your station and taken liberties that would surely be the end of anyone else, but there was something in his searching eyes that made you want to look at him, made you want to reach for his warmth and wrap your arms tightly around his chest.

You had nearly no self control left when faced with the prospect of inhaling his smell so closely, so deeply and you lunged into him, a lingering desperation that would not be sated by merely seeing his face, you needed your every sense satisfied and flooded with this man.

His breath left his chest in an agonizingly slow exhale, well controlled, yet somehow raw sounding over the top of your head. His chest, his sides, his back just below the palms of your hand were heated. Well warmed from the hours asleep in his cozy bed and your trembling hands ran along the skin of his back, searching for something. Seeking out what you were certain you would not find, surely not...it was just a dream. Just a haunting memory from another life that should not affect you so.

“You are trembling,” he whispered over your head, warm arms encasing your shoulders, making you squeeze against him tighter. “What has left you so unnerved in the middle of the night?”

You couldn’t get enough of his crisp smell. Clean and well set in, the smell of him was warmth. Like a comforting fire and a warm meal. Designed to heal you from the inside so you might possibly get through whatever life decided to toss your way. You shook your head against his chest, unable to bring voice to the words of his death that had destroyed you during the night. To speak of such things felt all but impossible.

“Did someone hurt you? Who would dare? Won't you tell me so that I may deal a swift punishment?”

“I dreamt of your death, my lord.” You spoke against his skin and your words took only a moment before he stiffened in your arms. Then a small chuckle left his lips, dancing over your head as the tightness with which he held you went slack.

“Ahh, did my darling have a bad dream?” The brevity in his voice did little to stop the tears that still fell from your eyes and you were certain that if you pulled your face up from his chest you would find his nightshirt a mess, and your face a puffy red disaster.

Hushing hands, designed to pacify, rubbed a slow and steady pathway down your back and he grew quiet as your weeping continued.

“Are you ready to tell me about it?” His patient whisper into the darkness above your head felt like a salve, ready to receive your every word and bring an end to your suffering once and for all. Yet when you finally forced yourself to pull back from the warmth of his chest, where the steady thrumming of his beating heart reminded you of his safety, you felt the mess on your face. You were still sniffling too much to bring your voice under enough control to speak and you felt him reaching for his blanket to wipe at the mess of tears on your face.

“Goodness, you’ll be the end of me,” he said, mostly to himself as he wiped at the moisture. You could feel the hiccups inside your chest as your diaphragm constricted involuntarily and a brief upset in your stomach surged for a moment.

It was time to calm yourself. This was no way to act in front of your king. The slow steady breathing you forced inside your lungs helped some and with your eyes closed you could feel the tension inside your chest beginning to settle.

“Come now, I hate seeing you so upset. Will you at least tell me how I died?” You looked into his imploring face, with eyebrows lifted in the way he did when asking you a question, not demanding for your obedience but merely asking. His face was well beyond the stages of sleep, the corners of his lips pouted down. Exaggerated and adorable. Beseeching and nonjudgmental. You’d do anything for this face.

“There was a war. You were shot, my lord.” You blinked into the words, finding their explanation lacking the more you considered the strange metal contraption tucked into the commander’s belt. “With a gun.”

“A gun?” His eyebrows screwed together with the strange word, shaking his head.

“It explodes with a loud booming sound and a projectile shoots out,” you explained softly, surprised at just how many details you remembered from the dream about the strange weapon that caused his demise.

“Ahh, like a hand cannon? Big cumbersome thing, about this big?” His hands extended as far out as they could go and you looked from one hand to the other before shaking your head.

“Small enough to fit in one hand,” you said, making a fist and sticking your pointed finger out toward him. You mouthed a pop and his serious expression faltered along with your confidence to explain the details of your dream. With your confidence that fell so did your focus. His eyes always seemed to see too much of you too easily.

His warm hand wrapped around your hand, bringing your eyes back up into his and he pulled, using your surprise to rest your hand over his warm chest. You caught tiny smile on his lips as the pounding of his heart reverberated through the palm of your hand.

“Your imagination is admirable.”

Imagination.

Something that felt so real, so devastatingly tangible had been nothing more than the make believe workings of your sleeping mind.

You had been so certain of it, yet the evidence of the contrary sat in front of you, striking eyes, half open and watching your face too closely as only he could.

“I dreamt of you, as well,” his eyes took on a distant look with his words and you inhaled a slow breath that hitched once when your insides hiccuped lazily, only half hearted remnants of being so upset lingering inside your heart.

“Not nearly as tragic as yours; although, with the direction it was headed, I do believe the interruption itself might count as a great tragedy.”

The vagueness of his tongue brought a smile to your lips which he mirrored in an instant and his hands moved the blankets that surrounded him as he pulled you closer. The magnetic pull of his body felt even stronger than his searching hands and you molded against him, letting him pull the warm covers over you as you occupied the king’s bed, your silk robe falling open, your bare legs a tangle with his, nearly impossible to extricate.

“Now that I recall,” he spoke against your forehead, close enough to feel the movement of his jaw and brush of soft lips along your eyebrow when he spoke. “It was a very strange dream. You were not present at the start, it was--” the sudden pause in his easy speech made your mind sharpen as you braced your heart.

He felt you stiffen of course, he often caught on to microscopic changes in your mood and you felt his arms tighten their hold on you as he brushed against your back, rubbing his reassuring warmth into you. “--it was her, the queen. Only in this phantom land I had made the decision to break our union.” As soon as he spoke the words, you felt the vibration of a small laugh from the center of his chest.

You did not laugh. Your heart felt the giddiness of the prospect that he would have some control over who he had married, but you absolutely did not dare to dream of such foolishness. You definitely didn't revel in it. It was a sin. It was treason. To dream of breaking the union of the king and queen, yet as he spoke of such villainous topics, he laughed, deep inside his chest, he laughed at the very thought.

Oh to be so free.

“Decision?” You said, simply unable to help yourself. Since when had any of his life ever been his decision?

“Right? Preposterous. I merely decided that I didn't wish to have her as my wife--unadorned by my royal crest, or scribed in my own blood, but merely with a quill and ink...I endorsed with my own hand, onto a ledger.”

Your disbelief matched his.

“War did not erupt. I was not struck down by the heavens. The nation did not dissolve. I did not lose my head. I merely removed a ornament from around my finger and I shared a drink with commoners.”

You pulled your face back, to better catch sight of his and he turned to face you. He knew too much. The slack of your jaw, as you worked the tip of your tongue along the inside of your cheek, his eyes caught it all. You knew better than to give any real consideration to fantasies such as this. They were just that, impossible dreams that would have no place in your head.

Whatever he had seen on your face took his eyes away from you for a moment. His chest rose and fell with a deep breath as he forced the wicked fantasy far away. Tossed far off over the horizon to be long buried below a thousand years.

“You appeared shortly after that, looking--” These pauses he took always meant something was coming and you sat up straighter, pulling your chin higher to watch his face as he spoke. “--positively odd. Strange hair. Articles of clothing not meant for a woman, yet somehow feminine and just--” he looked into your face, losing the nerve to continue with the scathing review of your appearance in his dream. You felt the small pout of your bottom lip, somehow disappointment that your appearance was so poorly received.

“--and just beautiful.”

You watched him closely