Cataclysm War | Chapter 73: The Queen's Desire (First Draft)

Leonidas took a breath as he came to a halt outside of his new quarters, glancing down at his wedding attire, and then looking right to the Royal Guards standing sentinel in the hallway. His eyes raked over the golden-armored warriors, and he chewed his lip for a moment before motioning over Leona, the Lance-Master on duty.

The woman approached at his beckoning, removing her plumed helmet and tucking it under her arm with a faintly amused expression.

“{Your Majesty,}” she greeted him politely, her blue eyes glimmering faintly with amusement.

“{Hello, Leona,}” Leonidas said while awkwardly reaching up to brush his hair, hitting his crown, and nearly knocking it off his head before he realized—catching it with a muttered curse and a blush of embarrassment. “{Divines curse it,}” he muttered, and then looked into the Lance-Master’s eyes. “{I, er, was wondering if—}”

“{The rooms are not soundproofed,}” Leona said immediately, her eyes twinkling faintly. “{But no one is going to intrude unless you or Her Majesty call for aid, my King.}”

Leonidas felt his blush cover his face and sighed heavily.

“{Am I that transparent?}”

“{Only to the entire world, Sire,}” Leona answered with a wry smile.

Leonidas grumbled again and glanced at the doors, hesitated, and then turned back to her.

“{Is there any chance I could ask you to—}”

“{We cannot abandon our post, my liege. That is the one order we cannot follow, even if you and the Queen both requested it. Not until you are both at least Elites.}”

Leonidas sighed again in defeat and massaged his temples.

“{You realize this is going to be mortifying, knowing you’re all out here,}” he muttered.

“{I assumed as much,}” Leona said with another faint smile. “{That is why I replaced all the Royal Guards on duty with women.}”

Leonidas paused at that, and then eyed the Royal Guards, realizing after a moment that she was correct.

“...huh,” he said quietly in realization, before looking back at her. “{Um, thanks, Leona.}”

“{Not a worry, Your Majesty,}” the Haelfar woman said with a grin. “{We are not inclined to let the men hear the Queen’s first night of passion any more than you are inclined to advertise it. Every woman here is either married or has a lover present or past. None of us will be, ah, sensitive to the matter.}”

Leonidas shivered at the thought, and it was less comforting than he’d hoped.

“{Strangely, that is less reassuring than you think, Leona,}” he muttered.

Almost as if taking pity on him, Aylar’s favored Lance-Master winked.

“{Don’t fret, my liege. If your endurance in the Arena is any sign, I daresay the Queen will hardly be disappointed.}”

Leonidas stared at her, rolled his eyes heavenward, and then nodded mutely.

After a moment more of mortified silence, he grimaced.

“{I suppose I’ll just…}” he gestured to the doors, and Leona smiled widely.

“{Of course, Your Majesty. Good luck!}”

Leonidas gave her a wan smile in return, took a breath, and then turned to open the doors, stepping into his rooms and shutting them firmly behind him, as if that could erase the mortification of the moment. His eyes searched the hallway immediately inside the room, carefully, and then he stepped forward—finding himself tiptoeing and promptly giving himself a stern mental smack.

It’s your wedding night, idiot. Stop being a moron.

He corrected himself to a proper walk after that reminder, further acknowledging it was hardly the first time he’d see his wife without clothes, and tried to remind himself that it was normal for a husband to be intimate with his spouse. A shaky breath left him, and Leonidas summoned his [Archon’s Will] to steady himself, shaking his hands out as his composure returned.

When he passed through the hallway into the chambers proper, the vision that greeted him stopped his heart.

Aylar was lying on the bed on her stomach—his bed, he reminded himself—in her wedding attire still, her bare legs in the air above her, crossed at the ankles, as she read through a Terran hardcover he sorely did not want to know the name of. Her blue eyes were drinking in the text as she read it, and there was a faint blush on her cheeks and the tips of her ears as she did.

Her eyes darted up a moment after he noticed her, and the Queen blushed more deeply, hastily closing the book—covering the title with her hand—and quickly restoring it to the [Spatial Storage Ring] on her right hand, clearing her throat after she did. “Hello, husband,” she said with a small smile, her eyes dancing over him, before shyly glancing away and then down to the bed. “I apologize, I was a little bored waiting, and—”

“It’s fine,” Leonidas said, realizing it actually was fine while his own eyes drank her in as he felt the nerves slowly melt out of his body. Why had he been nervous? The woman was breathtaking, yes, but she was still Aylar. His Aylar. His Swordmaiden. His wife. “I’m sorry for the delay. I was dithering in the hallways for reasons I can barely remember.”

Aylar’s cheeks brightened faintly again at his words, and her ears twitched in that cute, nervous tic she had after he spoke.

“It’s quite all right,” she assured him, before her eyes softened in consideration. “Did… was Synthra alright?”

“She was,” he affirmed, moving to the table set ahead of the bed and removing his crown to store it in his own ring, before starting to unlatch his pauldrons.

“W-wait!” Aylar said, extending a hand as she scrambled from the bed, tangled her legs, and fell face-first onto the floor—only to snap back to her feet with a deep flush as she hurried over to him. “Allow me,” she said after a moment, her hands rising to his pauldrons. “It’s customary for us to undress each other on the wedding night.”

Leonidas blinked at her words and then smiled faintly.

“Alteran custom,” he asked calmly, “or romance novel custom?”

Aylar stared at him for a moment, then smiled shyly, turning him toward her and starting to unlatch his golden pauldrons. “Does it matter?” she asked quietly, while her fingers worked deftly to unclasp his right shoulder, then his left, setting the pauldrons on the table. “I don’t think it should.”

Leonidas considered her after she spoke, then nodded in acceptance, straightening his arms to help her as she worked to remove his cape and outer layer of ceremonial plate.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said to her while she unlaced his bindings and pulled away his outer layer. “Though I think I know the answer,” he teased, watching her while she worked with focus on his armor.

“You are impossible,” she said with a smile, while brushing back her hair habitually and moving around to his side to work on unlatching the various ties on his tunic. “Did you enjoy the ball? I know you attended a few on Elatra, but I thought this one might be a bit different.”

Leonidas glanced at her at the question and then turned back toward the bed without entirely seeing it, his mind working on the question.

“It was… different, yeah,” he said finally while nodding slightly. “It felt strange, but somehow more, I dunno, appropriate, I guess. I managed to lay the groundwork for the House of Lords and the House of Commons, too. I have no doubt the information will be invariably misconstrued, but that’s just the cost of explaining things in that environment, I guess.”

Aylar chuckled at his words, and he was relieved to hear she sounded markedly more certain when she did.

“For all your acumen, my heart, you are terribly impatient toward politics,” Aylar agreed calmly. “You did handle it well, based on what I heard in the questions given to me—though giving me credit for the idea to appoint Uriel to the House of Lords was folly. You should not denigrate your own deductive reasoning so readily. You should have more faith in yourself. Real or not, Elatra gave you very valuable lessons in statecraft.”

“I know,” Leonidas murmured, “but I prefer to be seen as a comparative barbarian. It’ll make people underestimate me in the future, to their peril.”

Aylar hummed at that as she removed his tunic, leaving him in his long-sleeved white silk undershirt, then began removing his hip armor and vambraces.

“That will serve a purpose with some of them,” his wife conceded graciously, “but it will cost you more in the long-term, husband. You need to show them your capability. I gave you Sovereignty, my heart. We aren’t sharing rule like the vision. I am your Queen, and you are the King. I made that choice consciously. You need to adhere to it.”

Leonidas snorted softly at that.

“Even if that’s true, my wife—” he felt giddy when he said it “—it doesn’t change the fact that the Court will still look to you, and rightly so. I meant it when I told Ceruviel I plan to lead on the battlefield.” His eyes glanced at the door, and he flick-conjured a [Psionic Force] bubble around them to make them soundproof before continuing. “I’m the Cataclysm, Aylar. That comes with certain irrevocable facts of my nature, including the fact I am, invariably, naturally more comfortable in a fight.”

The Queen paused after he stated his beliefs, setting aside his vambraces and hip armor, and rising to peer into his eyes afterward.

“You are the Cataclysm,” she agreed calmly, “but you’re also the King, Leonidas. The Archon-King, at that. You can lead from the front, like the stories of King Arthur, but you cannot define yourself by that. You will need to trust our Generals as often as you take matters into your own hands, and you will need to govern. You cannot defer that solely to me—even forgetting the lack of wisdom in the act, it simply wouldn’t be fair, beloved.”

Leonidas looked into her eyes as she spoke, then sighed quietly.

“I suppose not,” he conceded while reaching out to brush his thumb over her lips, “but I cannot help but feel that you are just better suited to it than I am, Aylar. You were born for this. I was born for, I dunno, comics and political science. The System made me a Sovereign and a Cataclysm; I didn’t have much of a hand in it.”

Aylar smiled at his words and stepped closer, reaching down to grip his belt and unbuckle it without taking her eyes off of him. His pulse skipped a beat when she did, but he stayed focused. He still had his lower outer layer, after all.

“You were born to be exactly who you are, Leonidas,” his wife continued as she unlaced his outer layer of leather padding. “You may manage to denounce your own achievements to yourself, but not to me. You did defeat Azrageth, you did achieve Tribulation, you did become an Archon, and you did win my hand. You can lay that at the feet of the System if you wish, but it was you, not the System, that made you eligible to be a Sovereign. The System only validated what already existed within you. Besides,” she said as she tossed aside his belt and padding, “didn’t you choose Sovereign?”

Leonidas frowned at her words and then, after a moment, nodded in concession. He had chosen Sovereign, fully aware of its implications and weight, and done so because of what he’d been taught in Elatra. It hadn’t been the only choice; it had been the only choice he felt was right, which was, in and of itself, proof enough of her statement.

“You’re right, I suppose,” he said after a moment of thought, at which point he smiled wryly. “As usual.”

Aylar smiled appreciatively at his words and eyed him quietly, pausing for just a moment before decisively reaching out to pull off his shirt with only a second’s hesitation. Leonidas did not resist, lifting his arms to allow it, and when she tossed it aside almost eagerly, he raised his eyebrows at her.

“That was eager,” he murmured while Aylar blushed.

“I was impatient,” she admitted plainly, and then turned her back to him promptly, brushing her golden hair forward as she took a breath.

“You’re going to have to help me with my clothes, too,” she said with only a slight waver in her voice. “It is tradition.”

Leonidas shook his head at her words but didn’t argue. What would he even debate her on? By that point, they were committed.

His only response was to reach out and calmly unclasp the golden, ruby-encrusted bands around her biceps, setting them and the shrouding silk attached to them onto the table atop his own attire. The Queen shivered faintly when he did, but not in displeasure, and Leonidas smiled as he unlatched the clasps of her decorative necklace, pulling it free with care and then unlacing the white cloth beneath it.

Aylar tilted her head to make it easier for him, and Leonidas’ fingers brushed the bare skin of her neck when he was down, trailing down slowly to settle his fingers on her arms.

“You’re teasing me,” Aylar murmured plaintively. “I didn’t tease you.”

“True enough,” Leonidas affirmed, “but I can’t be held responsible for you missing an opportunity.”

Aylar laughed softly at that, despite her performative complaint, and he hooked his thumbs into her long sleeves, pulling the fabric down from her biceps and over her hands in a single release. Carefully, Leonidas set them aside, and his eyes moved to her bodice. His fingers moved with attention to detail as he undid and unlaced each line of the tight-fitting top, drawing a faint breath of relief from his wife as her chest was freed from the no doubt constricting top.

When it hung open on her back, he stepped forward, wrapping his arms around her while bending to kiss her neck. “Arms out, Aylar,” he murmured to her quietly, drawing an inhale of anticipation from her while he smoothly opened the back of the corset top and pulled it forward along her arms. Once it was off, and Aylar’s arms moved to automatically cover her naked torso, Leonidas set to work on her skirt bottom, loosening the subtle laces enough that it fell to pool in white silk around her bare feet.

With only her silken undergarments remaining, the Queen looked at him over her shoulder, arms still crossed with intrinsic shyness over her chest.

“...you still have your leggings,” she commented breathlessly.

“Don’t worry,” he said as he scooped her up into his arms. “It won’t last.”

Aylar gasped when he lifted her and instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck, while his eyes avoided looking down and instead focused on the path ahead.

“Aylar, I have to confess something,” Leonidas said as he made his way to their marriage bed and lay her upon it gently.

“What?” she asked quietly.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing you in my bed every night.”

Aylar grinned at him despite herself, and, after a moment, raised her hands to grip his face and pull him down toward the bed.

“Then stop talking, Leonidas,” she said breathlessly, “and take what is offered, my husband.”

In response, Leonidas pressed his mouth to hers, and Aylar melted against him with a sigh of delight, her fingers threading into his hair possessively.

There was only one thing he was certain of, as all other thoughts fled his mind, and he sank into the warm embrace of his wife.

They were both going to be exhausted by sunrise.