Shay miscarried
around the sixth month. Had it been earlier I might have wondered if she had
played me, but it was clear that she had truly been with child. There was
little said between us about the matter. Shay had made is clear from the first
that she wanted no emotional closeness in our marriage.
About a year after
Shay and I were married my father died quietly in his sleep. After so many
years of agony his last few months were oddly peaceful; a quiet slipping away. I
ordered a funeral that was as stately as that of any who came before. My
father’s death disturbed me only a little. I could not grieve much for a man
who had ignored me for most of my childhood and sent me away for the rest of
it, but I gave him in death what honor I could for he had been a better king
than father. I was crowned and took up his duties.
At first
everything seemed to go well. Shay and I did not have a typically happy
marriage. We rarely spoke except when required by public occasions. Of course I
had never witnessed first-hand a really happy marriage. Lord Stephen and my
father had both been widowers and my marriage to Aria had been so short and so
marred by my guilt that I could not look on it as a model. I felt somehow that Shay
pulled away from me as soon as we were wed. Like a glass wall sprung up the
moment the vows were said. There were no more talks about our sorrows or
anything besides the most necessary topics. She dutifully shared my bed once
every month in the hope of producing an heir, but she never again bore a live
child. I found our partnership worked. She could be a charming and engaging
queen. My barons liked her even if the people did not. From the beginning they
called her the spider. I thought it was because she had not produced a healthy
heir and at first was angry for her sake. She simply laughed and said they
could not hurt her.
She would stay in
the capital to take care of things while I was away and I always found no fault
in her management. We lived like this for ten years. I king and she queen and
it became hard for me to believe it had ever been otherwise. Oh I still loved
Alena, still dreamed of her, still longed for her, but I found my life as a
king, serving my people, fulfilling in a way I had never known as an aimless
young man. And I found Shay to be quite satisfactory as a queen.
I could at any
time gone to claim you, but two things held me back. First the stranger’s
warning had stuck in my mind in a way I can’t explain and second something
about Shay’s eyes whenever I brought up the subject of an heir scared me. At
first I attributed this reluctance to not wanting to hurt Shay by implying that
she was deficient for not giving me an heir, but as the years went on I
realized that I feared my wife and most of all I feared what she would do if
she knew there was a legitimate heir to my throne. I closed my eyes to the
future imagining that I had many more years on the throne and that I had not
been raise in the palace and it had not done me any harm.
The periods of
sickness began around the eleventh year of my reign. The doctors were
completely baffled by my array of symptoms. They prescribed and consulted and I
would get better for a time before the sickness would return, stronger than
before. By this time Shay held great sway in the court and even I feared her
political power.
