Chapter 118 – Queen Me (2)
(Olivia)
My knees hurt.
My ankles had gone from "this is uncomfortable" to "this might actually be permanent," but I refused to shift. Pride is a stupid thing to have when you're naked on your own bedroom floor, but it's all I had left that felt like mine.
His hands were still on my waist.
He squeezed, once, then let go.
"Good," Erynd said. "You can hold position and answer at the same time. That's a basic requirement."
He straightened.
Stepped away.
For a second I felt weirdly… abandoned, without his hands anchoring me.
Then my brain caught up and screamed at me for feeling anything about that.
He walked a little distance, into the middle of the room.
Turned his back on me.
"Your problem, my Queen," he said, "is that you still don't understand people."
He was in my line of sight now, not looking at me, hands clasped behind his back like he was lecturing in some Academy hall.
It was almost insulting.
I clenched my jaw.
"I understand people," I said. "I grew up at court. All I've ever seen is people."
"Faces," he said. "Not people. Masks. Not hearts."
He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to something only he could hear.
"Tell me," he said. "What do you think human nature is?"
My brain scrambled for something a tutor would approve of.
"We're… adaptable," I tried. "Capable of kindness and cruelty. Capable of change."
He snorted.
"Cute," he said. "No. Try again."
Heat crept up my neck.
"Then you tell me," I snapped. "Since you're clearly dying to."
He finally glanced back at me, over his shoulder.
There was something almost gentle in his eyes.
"Ambition," he said. "Human nature is ambition. Always wanting more. More food. More safety. More power. More certainty. Big or small, refined or crude, it all comes back to that."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
I didn't like how that sounded.
"How is that nature?" I asked. "Isn't ambition… taught? Encouraged? Some people are perfectly content with simple lives."
"Yes," he agreed. "Until those simple lives are threatened. Or they see someone with more. It's not always conscious. It doesn't have to be 'I want to rule the world.' It can be 'I want my family to be safe, no matter what it costs yours.'"
He turned fully now.
Walked toward me.
"Do you think that's wrong?" he asked.
I hesitated.
I thought of Father's ambitions.
Of nobles maneuvering for titles.
Of the baker's boy in the outer quarter who'd told me once, half-laughing, that all he really wanted was "enough bread that no one ever pushes my sister away from a stall again."
Ambition.
Everywhere.
My face must have given something away, because Erynd smiled faintly.
"Exactly," he said. "Ambition is not inherently evil. It's fuel. The question is what you do with it."
He stopped in front of me.
Looked down.
I refused to look away.
"Let's say you have a man," he continued. "A strong one. Charismatic. Good with a sword. People follow him easily. A general, perhaps. A war hero. Everyone loves him."
The picture felt too easy to cast.
We had plenty of those.
"So?" I said.
"So," Erynd said, "you kill him."
My breath caught.
"What?" I blurted. "Why?"
"Because you're paranoid," he said. "Because some noble whispers in your ear that he's too popular. Because you're afraid he might turn his army against you. You have him executed 'for treason,' or 'for corruption,' or some other convenient excuse. You remove the threat."
"That's—"
"Effective?" he suggested. "Possibly. For a week. Then someone else from his ranks rises. His second. Or his third. Another ambitious head pops up from the same soil, because the root is still there. The army's discontent. The nobles who backed him. The belief that the throne is vulnerable."
He shrugged.
"You've killed a man," he said. "You haven't solved your problem. You've probably created three more."
I swallowed.
He paced, slow, measured.
"Ambitious men," he said, "do not vanish. You can cut them down like weeds; they will still grow. Especially the capable ones. Fighters. Organizers. The ones who already know how to lead."
He stopped again.
Met my eyes.
"A good general," he said, "almost by definition has more ambition than 'die politely in the mud where the Queen's map tells me to.' If you leave him there too long, if you give him victories, men who love him, a name that people sing…"
He spread his hands.
"Where do you think that ambition stops, Olivia?" he asked.
My throat was dry.
"…with the throne," I said.
He inclined his head.
"Sometimes," he said. "Sometimes it just wants a dukedom. Sometimes it wants a quiet estate and a pile of money. But a good Queen assumes it might aim higher and plans accordingly."
I forced my legs not to move.
"So what do I do?" I asked. "If killing him is pointless. If leaving him in charge is dangerous."
"Good," he said softly. "You're asking the right question."
He circled me again.
Behind my back, his voice went thoughtful.
"One option," he said. "You move him. Different front. Different posting. Give him a promotion sideways. Make him governor of some distant province where his soldiers aren't."
That sounded… reasonable.
"Use his talents somewhere he can't threaten me directly," I said. "He's still useful. Less dangerous."
"Yes," Erynd said. "That's the lesser of two evils."
My brows knit.
"Why 'evil'?" I asked. "That doesn't sound evil."
"You're taking a good general," he said, "away from the place he's most effective and putting him somewhere he might not belong. You weaken your army. The men who trusted him now march under someone less capable. Some will die who didn't need to. You've made the state weaker to protect yourself."
My stomach twisted.
I'd never thought of it like that.
I'd only ever seen the pretty court version: He's earned a governorship; what a reward.
"You can't simply remove ambition from the board," Erynd said. "When you move one piece, something else opens. That's why there are so few good rulers. Most of them choose the option that feels better in the moment and ignore the cost."
He came back into view.
For once, he wasn't smiling.
"Lesser of two evils," he said quietly. "You'll have to choose those a lot. It's still evil. It still hurts someone. You'll have to live with that. You don't get to be clean."
His eyes softened just a fraction.
"Good girl," he added.
Not good Princess.
Not good Queen.
Just good girl.
It shouldn't have done anything.
It slid under my skin like something warm anyway.
I hated that.
He started to circle again.
"My Queen," he said, "we've talked about compassion. Cruelty. Ambition. Let's ask something uglier."
He stopped at my side.
Close enough that I could feel the heat of him.
"If you are a good ruler," he said, "can you also be a good person?"
I stared straight ahead.
"At the same time," he added. "Not 'before' or 'after.' While you rule."
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
I'd never… put it like that.
I'd always assumed they went together. Or that if they didn't, it was because the ruler had failed, not because it was impossible.
"I don't know," I whispered.
He sighed.
"Honest," he said. "Good. But wrong."
He crouched down, bringing himself to my level.
For the first time since I'd knelt, his eyes were directly in front of mine, not above me.
Dark.
Tired.
Bruisingly direct.
"You can't do both," he said.
The words landed like a slap.
"I—what?" I said.
"You cannot be a good ruler," he said evenly, "and a good person in the way you mean it. You can be decent sometimes. Kind sometimes. You can hold on to some principles. But 'good'—the way priests and storytellers use it? No. Not if you want to keep a kingdom intact."
"That's—" My throat closed. "That's cynicism."
"That's arithmetic," he said. "Think about what ruling actually is. You decide who lives where. Who eats what. Who doesn't eat at all. You sign orders that send people to die for lines on a map. You raise taxes, or you don't, and either way someone suffers. You choose which laws to enforce and which to quietly ignore. Every choice you make hurts someone. If you refuse to hurt anyone, you're not ruling. You're decorating the chair."
My stomach knotted.
"That doesn't mean you have to be bad," I said. "There has to be a way to—"
"To what?" he asked. "Save everyone? Rule without blood on your hands? Make every decision so perfect no one suffers from it?"
He shook his head.
"That's not ruling," he said. "That's fantasy. Useful to sell books and sermons. Useless if you're the one holding the pen."
I wanted to argue.
I really, really wanted to argue.
No words came.
"You can decide," he said quietly, "where the harm falls. You can decide how much is too much. You can refuse certain lines: 'I will not slaughter children to send a message. I will not feed my people to the priests to gain a miracle.' That's where your person lives. In the lines you won't cross. But the job itself?" He shrugged. "It's knives. Always."
My eyes burned.
"I don't want to be a monster," I whispered.
"Good," he said. "Monsters are sloppy. They enjoy the hurt for its own sake. They stop thinking. I don't want you to be a monster either. That's what the nobility is for."
A wet laugh escaped me, half-choked.
He held my gaze.
"A Queen has to be willing to do things that will be called monstrous," he said. "To break powerful families. To hang popular traitors. To send troops against rebels who might have decent reasons to be angry. If you refuse all of that because you want to stay 'good,' you won't be Queen for long."
He leaned in slightly.
"And the person who replaces you," he added, "almost certainly won't care about being good."
I swallowed hard.
He searched my face for a second, like he was checking how much had sunk in.
Then he straightened again.
"A person who becomes Queen against the will of the majority," he said, "propped up by nobles who see her as a convenient tool… what should her priority be?"
My mind jerked.
Images tumbled.
Crowds outside the palace during the last plague, shouting for bread and medicine.
Nobles in silk whispering about "stability" and "proper blood".
Father saying, They will accept you because they must.
"…to keep the nobles happy?" I guessed, weakly. "If they're the ones who put her there?"
He shook his head.
"Wrong battlefield," he said. "Think wider."
His eyes pinned me.
"Who outnumbers whom?" he asked. "Nobles or everyone else?"
"Everyone else," I said softly.
"Who does the work?" he asked. "Who grows the food, swings the hammers, fills the ranks, carries the stretchers, cleans the filth in the streets? Nobles? Or everyone else?"
"Everyone else," I repeated.
"So," he said, "if you are a Queen the nobles support and the majority does not, what is your first real task?"
The answer came like it had been waiting.
"Win over the commoners," I said.
He smiled.
"Good girl," he said again.
It warmed and hurt in the same breath.
"It will be easier," he went on, "if she takes them under her protection. Not as a performance. As policy."
I frowned.
"Protection how?" I asked. "More bread? Less tax? That's just… populism. We still have limited resources."
He nodded.
"It's not about throwing coins into crowds," he said. "It's about making it clear that when their interests clash with the nobility's, you are willing to choose them."
Tamara's voice, from weeks ago, drifted through my memory, complaining about tax collectors protected by titles.
"You break nobles," he said. "Publicly. Specific ones. Ones they hate already. The ones whose cruelty is obvious. You make examples. 'This man beat peasants to death for sport and thought his name would protect him. It did not.' You send soldiers to escort grain caravans and you order them to beat tax-men who cheat."
I winced.
"Nobles will call that tyranny," I said.
"They will," he agreed. "They'll call you ungrateful. Disloyal to your 'own class.' A traitor to your blood."
His eyes darkened.
"Let them," he said. "They are loud. But they are few."
He took a breath.
"The wishes of the nobility," he said, "matter. Ignore them completely and they'll sharpen knives in the dark. But they are not the only wishes that matter. Too many kings forget that. Too many queens never learn it at all."
He looked at me like he could see through my skin.
"Your safety," he said, "is not in the approval of men who would happily marry you to a cousin for land. It's in the quiet support of the woman who cleans your sheets and the man who shoed your horse. If they decide you are worth bleeding for, the nobles' daggers become much less dangerous."
My chest felt tight.
"So I should… be loved by the people," I said. "And feared by the nobles."
He snorted softly.
"Loved, respected, tolerated, grudgingly approved of," he said. "Any of those will do. Love is useful, but fickle. Fear is sharp, but overused it turns on you. You want something deeper: the belief that you are, overall, better than the alternative."
He looked tired suddenly.
Older.
"People will call you a tyrant," he said quietly. "Some of them will genuinely hate you. They will write plays about your cruelty. They will tell stories about the time you hanged a popular lord or broke a temple's power or refused to pardon a crying supplicant."
My throat ached.
"And are they wrong?" I asked.
"Sometimes," he said. "Sometimes not. You will make mistakes. You will hurt the wrong people. You will be cruel when you could have been firm instead. That's part of the job. The important thing is that when you are cruel, it's for a reason that benefits the state. Not just your mood."
He turned away from me then.
For a moment I thought he was done.
My legs had started to shake uncontrollably.
My whole body felt like it was buzzing.
"Come on," he said suddenly.
Arms slid under me.
One behind my shoulders, one under my knees.
I yelped as he lifted me off the floor.
"Erynd—"
"Hush," he said. "You've proven you can kneel. I'd rather you still be able to walk tomorrow."
He carried me the few steps to the bed and laid me down.
Gently.
No flourish.
Just set me on the mattress and stepped back enough to give me space.
I scrambled for the sheet out of habit.
Pulled it up over my chest and hips.
It didn't make me feel less exposed.
He sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that I could feel the dip under his weight, but not touching.
He stared at nothing for a long moment, jaw tight.
"Therefore, my Queen," he said finally, voice lower, "a ruler must not worry overmuch about being labeled 'cruel' when the question on the table is keeping her subjects loyal and united."
His eyes flicked to me.
"In the long run," he said, "she will prove more compassionate than the ruler whose excessive softness leads to chaos. Chaos kills more than harsh laws do. It just does it slower, and without names attached."
There was… something in his voice.
A thin thread I couldn't name.
Sadness? Regret?
Guilt?
"Have you… done that?" I asked before I could stop myself. "Chosen… cruelty for the sake of compassion?"
He exhaled through his nose.
"That's a question for another night," he said.
I pushed myself up, sheet clutched to my chest, and sat beside him.
Our shoulders almost touched.
Almost.
I stared at his profile.
At the tired line of his mouth.
At the way his eyes were focused on a point far beyond my bedroom wall.
"And you?" I asked, heart hammering. "Are you a good ruler or a good person?"
He didn't answer.
Not yet.
The silence stretched between us, thin as a blade.