I felt like I could've used a past story for this prompt as well, but I managed to whip something up real quick despite me getting a bit sicker and sicker by the day.

Link to original post: https://old.reddit.com/r/TwistedWonderland/comments/xe5lzy/twstober_prompt/

*********************

The fire from the column torches crackled. Not a single cricket or cicada sang that night. Even Leona was strangely surprised to not see the staff in their gossipy moods when each time he passed a servant in the hall, they didn’t flinch at his presence. He supposed it was to be expected after returning home to report what they had found today, and even he himself was not in moderate spirits.

Leona thought of going to his room and calling it a night, but as he was passing Rivianna’s chamber, guilt swamped over. What if she was already asleep? He pondered this for a few seconds, but his better judgment underranked his self-conscious curiosity.

He pushed the curtains of the chamber entryway with such delicacy. The only source of light came from the small candles Rivi lit for the evening instead of using the lanterns. Leona made his way through the dark connecting hall into the bedroom, where Rivi sat on the bed, body facing the closed wall. Her nightclothes cloaked her in black, like the darkness outside. He was at a loss to start, but if he stood there and said nothing, what purpose did he have for invading her private space?

He sighed heavily. “Listen…What happened back at the caves there…None of that was your fault.”

The overthrown Queen slowly stood herself up from the mattress. She rasped her claws along the room’s wall. “Try saying that to me two years ago.”

He gritted his teeth. “Don’t go off saying that. Don’t make it sound like what happened today wasn’t normal.”

“Normal for any common magic user, yes. Normal for a queen? Queens do not go berserk.”

“I hate to break it to you, your Majesty, but royals who don’t ever go insane are the minority.”

She refused to look Leona in the face as much as she wanted to. Rivianna wanted him to know how much pain that it has caused her over the years. She wanted him to feel what she felt the day everything was taken away from her.

“It does not make you any less of a leader, whether you lost or won the fight.”

“I don’t care about the fight! My Overblot state killed my son!”

Leona stepped a few inches away.

“When you are there, you don’t think. You don’t feel anything but rage and vengeance. I was more focused on protecting my kingdom that I forgot that my legacy rested at home! The only family I had left…I lost…Ripped from me as punishment for my sins!”

“I know all of that. I experienced losing my senses and my family. I had only one person who I looked to for every sense of protection that exists in this world, and what happened? Bad luck struck yet again, and the world thought it would be a good idea that I’d live without him. My mother was too busy priming and propering my brother for the King’s throne, so I was left in the dark of pretty much everything. I was only there to be needed for the grunt work, never wanted just because. Then, everything collapsed at the worst time possible…at my school where everyone who was lookin’ up to me saw it play out in full force. I was only thankful that my family wasn’t there to see me actually crumble. I could only imagine what they would’ve thought I was then. Perhaps, I would’ve confirmed their thoughts of me being useless or proved that I was really a devil child after all. So yeah, I know what it’s like to wanna watch the world burn at your fingertips, and there’s nothing wrong with that feeling, alright?”

Rivianna cleared her throat, but it coughed her to cough. She sniffed before finally looking at Leona for the first time since their return back to the palace. His face was flushed with invulnerable embarrassment. His hands trembled at his hands. Leona bit his lip, so it could stop quivering. “That’s quite some courage you mustered to tell me something like that.” She wiped a forming tear from her eye. “And here I thought the Prince Leona Kingscholar didn’t have any feelings.”

He shook his bangs out of his face. “That should tell you something, right? You can’t get into state if you don’t feel a thing at all…But then again…” He slowly prowled towards the grieving Queen. Leona took two of his fingers and carrassed Rivi’s flawless cheek, following the trail of where her tears would’ve fell had she let them go. “Feelings can’t kill ya. They didn’t then, right?”

She scoffed. “You know the truth now. You should be thinking me a disgrace by now.”

“A disgrace is one who jumps ship when crap is at the peak of disaster. You stood by your people until the end, and there was no crime in fulfilling your duty then. I do think it is a crime to give up on them as if the fight was all for nothing.” Leona shuffled through his garb pocket and found the medallion that Rivi threw away earlier that day. He dangled it in between the both of them. “What do you say now, your Majesty? You’re not going to give up on the Guard of Sunset Savannah, right?”

Rivianna’s breathing pace hastened. The twinkle of the medallion from the small flames of the candles gave off a customary notion. A memory that she had stored in the back of her mind, one that she kept pushing back to prevent greater sadness. The push could no longer be useful. With her left hand, she grasped both the medallion and Leona’s right hand, fingers interlocking. The rest of her collided with Leona’s, and she sat her head on his shoulder, gasping for air. She hadn’t had her racing heart hurt for a long time, but in that time, the pain wasn’t out of sorrow. Rivi couldn’t tell what type of pain it was. She didn’t want to find out just yet.

Leona wrapped his left arm around her upper back to keep Rivi standing. He turned his head a little so that his mouth met her ear. Her hair was soft under his chin. It soothed him despite Rivianna being an emotional wreck. Her breakdown was the least of his worries. “You need to unwind,” he said. “There’s no shame in time to yourself and your grief.”

“You would know, of course,” she replied, sniffling some more. Rivianna slightly parted herself from him, so she could get a good look at Leona’s face. “But…my work is not finished. They’re still out there, and I can’t stand idly as they wreak havoc on our territories. They need to understand that…” Her eyes burned. “That we are the law of this kingdom, and they will not live another day under this sun.”

“And you are ready for that?”

She gave one nod. “I’m more ready now than I have been my entire life…But…”

“But?”

“Could I ask you to stay?”

“Here?” he asked to make sure that he heard her question correctly.

Rivi nodded again. “I’m not feeling as easy as I should be.”

Leona didn’t want to believe what he was hearing, fearing that it was a gag at his expense. On the other hand… “If you’re asking me, consider it done.”