No debt left unpaid

CW: Grief, death

There is a blank second between sleeping and waking that exists to make the decision between life and oblivion. Today, Julia clung to it. For the nanosecond where she didn’t really exist, she was at peace. A calm that could not and would not last, but existed to give her a reprieve nonetheless. Its end was abrupt and extreme and too soon. Forever would be too soon.

Today is the worst day of my life, she thought to herself. The only place, her mind, where she could voice her thoughts without scrutiny. Not that the rest of her life, every day, would not be the worst day of her life.

Reluctantly, after a long-held breath, she opened her eyes to emptiness. In the physical and the spiritual. In her far too encompassing bedroom, the walls a dark shade of red, her favorite color. A color that would now haunt her every waking step.

She could hear the birds like she did every morning. Except she wasn’t sure if it was because she was losing her mind. Where they usually chirped, they seemed to cry, like they were in tune with her being.

“Your Majesty,” came a voice beyond the door, careful and practiced. “May I come in? You have overslept.”

Julia opened her mouth. She meant to respond, but all that came out was a hoarse attempt. Instead, she hastily got out of bed to let the servants in, only to see the consequences of her actions the night prior. The upholstery astray. Her glasses shattered. Wine on the floor.

In her waking, she had forgotten. The edges of her memory blurred as she tried to recall what she had done, but nothing came. The wine itself was the explanation. She rarely drank. It dulled her senses completely. She knew why she had this time, though.

Another knock came, firmer.

“Your Majesty,” the head maid said, “the king has requested your presence at breakfast. It is imperative we get you ready as soon as possible. Is everything alright in there?”

Agora had taken care of Julia almost her entire life. She trusted the older woman with her life. She was more of a mother to her than a maid.

She needed to make a decision.

She could not be found like this. Her room astray. Herself undone. She could not even imagine what she looked like.

“Agora,” Julia said quietly, “you may come in. But just you.”

“But I will need help,” Agora replied, already pushing gently at the door. The fact that she could counter a direct request from the queen spoke to their familiarity.

“Not yet,” Julia said. “For now, just you.”

“As you wish.”

Reluctantly, Julia opened the door ajar and all but pulled the woman inside.

Agora stopped short.

“Are you alright—” she began, then trailed off as she took in the room, the wreckage, the woman she had raised.

Julia looked at the room properly for the first time. It looked looted. As if grief had hands. Tears had not been enough to release the tension in her body, so her surroundings had suffered instead.

“He meant that much to you,” Agora said softly.

She had not spoken his name. She didn’t need to.

The recollection of what had brought Julia here crashed back into her all at once. She collapsed, the pressure returning, the beginning of an explosion like the one from yesterday. Agora dropped to her knees beside her without hesitation.

“I know how cruel this will sound,” Agora said steadily, “but you made a choice yesterday. Cleaning this room and cleaning you is what must be done now. You were spared. And if you lie here and let yourself disappear, then his sacrifice will be for nothing.”

The truth struck harder than any blow.

“I will take care of this,” Agora continued. “You go to the bath. It’s already prepared. It may be cold now, but that might be exactly what you need.”

“You cannot grieve for him now,” she said more quietly. “Do it after you have accomplished something.”

It was a slap in the face. If Agora had ever struck her, it would have hurt less.

Julia pulled herself off the floor in a corpse-like movement and walked to the adjacent bath. Afraid of her reflection, she avoided the mirror and stepped straight into the tub.

Over the years she had lived in this palace and inherited the role of queen, she had grown used to the priorities that title demanded. Today, the idea of hands helping her bathe and dress made her want to choke on the water they had poured.

She was grateful, if grateful was a feeling she could ever feel again, for the solitude.

She stepped into the freezing water.

The shock dragged her fully back into herself. Her senses returned in a rush. Her wits followed. Agora’s words rang in her ears.

She could not fold inward. Not now. She allowed herself a few seconds to feel, then closed herself off like a door being shut. The way she had learned to do over years. In minutes she went from human to vessel. She washed with efficiency. Years of discipline had not been lost to grief.

She stepped out of the bath dripping wet and walked naked back into her bedroom, where Agora was already restoring order. Agora did not comment on her nakedness. She had seen it countless times over the years. Instead, she ushered Julia to the vanity by the window.

Outside, the birds had gone silent.

“You mentioned the king requested my presence,” Julia said. “Why now? We haven’t dined in months.”

“I cannot say for certain,” Agora replied, “but he may suspect your loyalties lie elsewhere.” She gestured, subtly, to the evidence of the room.

“He could not,” Julia said. “I have been careful. You didn’t even know the extent of it.”

“To be clear,” Agora said, “I knew. Not everything. But enough.”

“Princess Demia was there yesterday,” Agora added.

“I did not see her.”

“She was,” Agora said. “And she reported what she saw. That is my best guess.”

“Inconvenient.”

Her cold demeanor slid fully back into place. There was a time and place for things, and in this palace there was never either.

A short while later, Julia stood restored. Her room bore no evidence of the night before.

As she crossed the threshold, Agora leaned in and whispered, “No debt left unpaid.”

The dining hall was blinding. White stone. Towering chandeliers. A table large enough for twenty. Guards lined the walls.

Julia, stone statue she is, is accompanied by her guard to the hall.

The dining hall is sterile, encompassed by towering chandelier fixtures that drown out color entirely. No matter what one wears in this room, it is reduced to the same pale submission. The space does not allow beauty to carry into its embrace. It neutralizes it. Flattens it. Julia does not feel this as she walks. She does not feel much at all. She is present only as function, as mouthpiece. Detached from feeling.

“Your Highness,” the guard announces, his voice echoing despite his restraint. “You requested my presence.”

“Yes,” the king replies without looking up. “Sit, wife.”

The table could seat twenty. Intimate dining here is impossible by design. Julia is placed nineteen paces away from the king’s position at the head, a distance that feels intentional. The only mercy the day affords her.

She sits.

The meal has already been placed before her. The king has begun eating. He did not wait for her presence, an indication of either his impatience or her tardiness. She does not care. She performs the niceties of politeness, lifting her utensils, arranging herself into the shape expected of her.

Silence fills the space between them.

It stretches.

After a while, the king speaks.

“I am sorry for your loss.”

The words strike her harder than shock ever has. Up until this moment, she had thought of her husband as an obstacle, a nuisance, a necessary arrangement. Humanity had never been something she associated with him.

She says nothing for half a second.

That fraction of time is spent processing the impossibility of what he has just offered. Sympathy. Or something shaped like it.

Then she smooths it over. Plasters herself back into inhumanity.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I have heard about the incident yesterday,” he says calmly. “We need not speak further of it. I simply wanted you to know.”

She does not believe him. She cannot. This is a ploy like those before it, and like those before it, it will fail. It has already failed.

“I appreciate your concern, my king,” Julia replies evenly. “But your guards did their duty. I am unharmed and well.”

“That they did,” he says.

He returns to his meal.

The silence resumes, heavier now, but Julia does not fill it. She eats mechanically, untouched by taste, untouched by thought. Whatever game the king believes he is playing, he will find no crack here.

She is not grieving.

She is already gone.

Night came without ceremony.

Julia waited until the palace settled into its familiar false sleep. Guards relaxed. Footsteps thinned. Doors stopped opening for reasons that mattered.

She went to the window.

The railing beneath it came loose easily. She had weakened it over time, imperceptibly. A path carved slowly. Patiently. A contingency she had sworn she would never need.

Cold air rushed in as she slipped through.

She moved along stone corridors and narrow ledges, places never meant to be walked, only maintained. Her body remembered even as her mind resisted. She did not think of falling. She did not think of him.

The chamber waited.

It had not yet been cleared. No one had decided what to do with the belongings of a man who had never officially existed. His boots stood where he had left them. His coat still hung from the chair. The room smelled faintly of metal and salt and something warmer she refused to name.

She took what she could carry.Then she saw the letter. Folded once. Placed deliberately.She did not open it. She walked. The path to the sea was slick. Uneven. Rain began to fall, soaking her hair, her clothes, the paper clutched in her hand. She stopped at the edge.Only then did she open the letter.

My love,

I write this in earnest, because I do not fear how I fell for you.

Our circumstances are unfortunate, yes. In another life, our stars might have been kinder to us. Or our feelings gentler, so we would not have fallen for what was always meant to be unattainable.

You may not be able to give me much, but I say this to you without hesitation: I am prepared to give you more than everything. If I knew a way to give you my soul, I would.

I hope you do not take offense in my calling us unfortunate souls, but we are. To love without ever knowing in the flesh what it is to proclaim that love openly. To tell the world that you are it.

So I will stay by your side in the ways that I can. In protection. As long as my corporeal body exists, you are protected. And in the afterlife, you will have a place to land. If I could haunt you, I promise I would. Not in a way that brings you grief, but relief.

Alas, I write this in vain. You will not take it when I give it to you. But if by chance you ever stumble upon it, believe in it. Believe in me. I have never believed in anything more than you.

No debt left unpaid.

— Love, Jace

She read it once.Then again. Her hands did not shake.She folded the letter.She did not cry for him. Grief was a language she could no longer afford to speak. Any humanity she had left had died with him. She said his name aloud.The rain swallowed it.

She stepped forward, stopping just short of the water. Rain plastered her hair to her face. The letter softened in her hand, ink bleeding away. This, too, was a choice. Later, long after the palace had forgotten her absence, Julia stood outside once more, alone in the courtyard, rain soaking her skin. She did not look up.She did not pray. She let the rain fall on her as judgment.

And when morning came, the queen would rise with it.