Chapter Text
Celestria was a kingdom of many stories.
Her Majesty knew this well. She appreciated a good tale herself, whether written or shared amongst adventurers. She missed those days. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel the warmth of the campfire, hear every crackle of bark as it was eaten to ash, smell the smoke as it wafted skyward.
The castle fireplace simply wasn’t a good enough substitute. There was such a lack of camaraderie here. There was no way to circle around the fireplace. There was no meeting another’s gaze over the flames. The spark was what she remembered most from her omega. The flash of his grin and the sturdiness of his broad shoulders. The shine of his eyes when they lit with his laugh.
The eldest son of a noble family. Skipped over in the line to inherit due to his presentation, but his noble family name had been acceptable enough for her own family to accept her wishes. Not that their disapproval would’ve stopped her. She, too, had been the eldest and always guaranteed to inherit the throne.
She missed him as much as she did the campfires, the wildness some described her youth as. Travels marked with skirmishes which had expanded Calestria’s holdings. She’d made enemies in her younger days, enemies with which she now had to make peace with. She wasn’t at all sure how she would manage it. Not now.
“Your Majesty!” a handmaiden gasped from the door. “Come away from the window! In your delicate condition, peering out those frigid windows. Your fire’s gone out! You’ll catch your death.”
She wouldn’t. As winter had set in, her body had remained warm. A secret she would take to her grave if need be. A story long before her own had changed the ways this gift would be perceived as, and she wasn’t yet in a position where she could alter the laws and still keep the peoples’ favour. They had sympathy for her now, but she didn’t expect that to last long. In some spaces, she knew, the tides were already turning towards the more vicious of rumours.
“I didn’t notice,” she replied, turning away from the window. Her skirts couldn’t hide the roundness of her belly, nine months drawing closer by the day. Nine months since the last day she’d spent with him. Since he’d given her a final gift. “There’s no need to relight it. I’ll be retiring shortly, and I’ve no energy to tend it to smulders. Nor will I ask any of you to stay up so late.”
“You know none of us mind a late night, Your Majesty.”
“I do.”
After all, some minded more than others. She wasn’t ignorant to the complaints some had whispered as her omega’s illness had grown worse. Years of medicines and healers from far and wide. Years of watching those broad shoulders slump. Jehoel had begun to grow frail, yet no one had held any answers. Not even when she’d reached out to healers whose particular skills were outlawed had an answer been forthcoming. Even one who held more power than others had only been able to give them so much.
All she and his family had been able to do was watch and hope and pray, yet no miracle had come and his family had left to mourn within the comfort of their own walls. All but his brother, a beta who’d asked to stay among his brother’s things to keep from losing his scent entirely.
Odd, though, that he would leave when her pregnancy could no longer be hidden.
She shook away thoughts of Met, a hand gently caressing the spot where the unborn pup aimed strong kicks. They would be as strong as their elder sister, she hoped, though six-year-old Michael had been sent with her beloved’s family. They would take care of her until she was ready to have her return. The girl had seemed happy to leave a home filled with her mother’s grief.
“Leave the tray, please. I’ll have my dinner here.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” It was settled on a side table, the maid giving a deep curtsy before retreating to whisper to her fellow servants that the Queen had let the fire go out yet again. No one was foolish enough to throw an accusation out, yet all hoped the babe was born normal. For their sake, if no one else’s. Celestria was not yet ready for magic. Not even in the royal bloodline.
Though many would whisper of magic and miracles when Queen Frances and King Jehoel’s second child and only son was born nine months to the day after his father had breathed his last. At first wail, the queen loved him. At first sight of a familiar spark in equally familiar eyes, she vowed to protect him.
Prince Aziraphale began his story in a kingdom where he wasn’t welcome as he was, where his parentage was questioned, and where things were rarely as they seemed.
The boy had spirit and conviction, that much Agnes could admit. He also had a set of lungs on him that could put a fully manifested banshee to shame. She watched him unobtrusively from her work table as she removed imperfect leaves from the herbs she’d just picked before hanging them to dry. He knew she was there, of course, and her presence was probably why he was shouting so loudly at the potatoes. She’d noticed he didn’t do so nearly so loudly when he thought he was alone. He did it for her benefit, a plea for attention. Bad attention, of course, but when one was his age and feeling like he didn’t matter, any attention was better than none. She would give it to him, eventually, by telling him to knock it off, but she would also go over and ask which plant had earned his ire.
It was a delicate balancing act that Agnes knew she did not always juggle proficiently. Her own daughter had been easier, calmer, and the granddaughter she left in her care so much like her. She was also similar in stubbornness to young Anthony, who shouted at the plants in the garden and cried only when he thought no one would know.
His pain and his anger alike were not his fault. This, she knew. An accident of birth and an aligning of stars had ensured natural talents that were dangerous to have. And his magic was strong, not some piddly talent that would be easily hidden and forgotten about. Had someone discovered him… Well, she didn’t blame the parents for seeking her out. It was safer for him and them if he was raised by someone who understood his gifts and how to hone them. And she knew he would go on to do great things someday. She’d seen it in her dreams. Fire and ice and a grand responsibility he would only resent for a brief time. The boy had a grand destiny, and she could only hope she could make him ready for it when the time came.
Now, whether Anthony Crowley would accept his destiny would be an entirely different matter and not something even she could predict. That would be up to the boy.
Agnes set her herbs aside and made her way across the garden to him, hearing him scream louder when he realised she was headed his way. It was expected and one of the many ways she knew it was mostly for attention.
“Pustulant mangled bollocks!”
“Now what on the gods' green earth did that poor potato plant do to earn that?”
Anthony glared up at her expectantly, but when no proper scolding followed, he huffed and crouched in front of said plant. “‘S not flowered like the others.”
Indeed it hadn’t. While the other potato plants had bloomed little white flowers, the one Anthony was shouting at had yet to follow suit. “There’s an easy remedy for that.”
“I know. But if I help it along, then the rest’ll think it’s okay to slack off, and then we won’t have any potatoes.”
Agnes nodded sagely, as if that made all the sense in the world. “Then give it time, boy. Some living things need a little more time than others.”
Anthony scowled up at her, impatient, but not quite as fiercely as he usually was. “What if it never blooms?”
It was the sort of question she was used to from him; the hypotheticals, the what-ifs. The boy was full of questions, some more easily answered than others. “Then it doesn’t; would that be so bad?”
He never liked it when she answered his question with one of her own, but it never failed to make him to think and ponder. He’d have an answer for her eventually and a whole slew of new questions, even if it would be at the most inopportune time.
Agnes left him to his wonderings and to his disgruntled poking at the potatoes. She could see the late bloomer unfurling its flowers in just a day or two; the boy only needed patience.