The Night Before

Hadrian didn’t notice the portrait swing open.

Ilya stepped down over the threshold of the secret passage and stood there, watching.

The table in the middle of the room, usually full of stacks of books and papers and various contraptions, had been cleared to make room for the large map now unfurled across its surface. The only place for books there now were the heavy tomes that held down the map’s corners.

King Hadrian was seated on a bench before the table, bent low over the map and its little figurines. The line of his brow set into a deep furrow that seemed to deepen the shadows around his eyes. That, along with the scruff on his cheeks and chin, made him look much older than his twenty-three years. In his hand a quill never stopped moving along a parchment that lay just off to the side of the figurines that represented the enemy’s forces. If Ilya stayed quiet, she imagined she could hear his muttering to himself.

“Hadrian,” she called, soft, and Hadrian jerked his head up with a start. His hand was mid-scramble for the sword leaned on the table nearby before he took her in, and his shoulders slumped with a breathy sigh.

“Goddess, Ilyana, you scared me.”

“Yes, I could tell,” she said, a gently amused smile now matching the one on his own face. She took her hand away from the frame and moved towards him, letting the portrait swing back closed. “The hinges haven’t been oiled in some time. I’m surprised you couldn’t hear the screeching when I opened it.”

She reached for him, resting a hand on his shoulder. His hand came up and enveloped hers. Ilya squeezed, noting the tension under her palm, the feel of bone. Hadrian had never been particularly thick or well-muscled, but he appeared to only grow thinner as of late. Perhaps all the sword training was finally taking its toll.

“I didn’t expect you to come that way,” he was saying, apparently oblivious to her studying gaze. “You haven’t come through the secret passage in years.”

“Well, I did try to come through the usual avenue of your bedroom door. But the guard said, ‘His Majesty asked not to be disturbed from his rest‘ and no, his doting older sister did not count for an exception,” Ilya replied. 

Her smile morphed into a grin at the chagrined look on Hadrian’s face. She nudged at him and he shifted over on the bench, allowing her to settle down next to him. She took a moment to arrange the skirt of her dressing gown and her night shawl before she clasped her hands together in her lap. 

“So I, having overheard His Majesty tell Sir Wyland to bring a copy of the battle plans to his room, and knowing the King was certainly not at rest, decided to come through Great-Uncle’s portrait instead.” 

Ilya cut a sidelong glance at him.

Hadrian dropped his gaze to his lap just as quick.

“I’m sorry,” was the only sheepish reply.

“If you wanted to keep me away, you should have posted a guard in the passage as well.”

“I wasn’t trying to keep you away.”

“No, you were only trying not to get caught with a map of the Verdant Fields across your workbench,” she teased him. 

He slumped further, head bowed, looking very reminiscent of a child caught with his hand in the sweets. Her teasing hit too close to the truth. 

Ilya sighed and reached for his hands. He let her take them without complaint.

“Hadrian, you have been over these plans a thousand times,” she murmured. “It is the eve before the march. You must get some sleep. The last thing our forces need to see is their King fall from his saddle due to exhaustion. And Goddess knows you won’t have time for rest once you reach the Fields.”

She squeezed his hands but did not get an answering squeeze back. Nor did Hadrian lift his head to meet her eyes. Instead, he pulled his hands from hers and reached for his parchment, covered in the unsteady scrawl of all his notes on military placements and battle maneuvers. He dragged it towards him and appeared to stare through it into the murk of his own thoughts.

Ilya looked at him, the dark circles around his eyes, the troubled lines of his face. The boy he used to be seemed so long gone. What she wouldn’t give to see the flash of a bright smile instead of a frown. It felt like she hadn’t truly seen that smile in the five long years since this all began. The only trace of that precocious boy now was in the depths of his eyes, in which she knew she would see fear if he would only look at her. 

“I can’t sleep,” he finally admitted, so soft that Ilya almost didn’t see his lips move. “What if I forget something? What if I make a mistake?” 

“You won’t. You have worked this map with the best captains our army has. The General has full faith in our strategy and our intelligence.” Ilya’s answering tone was as fierce as it was assuring. “And I have never known you to forget anything critical, let alone something you have poured over for weeks. But if you do somehow manage to gain amnesia on the road, your officers will be at hand to remind you. You aren’t marching into this battle alone. This isn’t a test.”

Beside her, Hadrian began to tremble. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, enveloping him with her shawl and drawing him into a hug. He crumpled into her embrace, tucking his head under her chin and resting his cheek on her chest, just like he used to do when he was small. 

They were only three years apart in age, but he always seemed so much younger, to her. As if the vision of the young boy he had once been, toddling after her, would never leave her. Ilya squeezed him tighter and hoped he couldn’t hear the agony in her heartbeat. 

“I’m scared,” Hadrian mumbled, and that too was a confession that made her heart ache. 

“I know. I am too.”

“Will I be able to do this, Ilya?”

There was no trace of hesitation in her lie. “Of course you will. I have full faith in you.”

If only she could comfort herself with the same assurance. She could not lie as easily to herself as she could to others. 

Hadrian III, young King of Lisborne, was no soldier. He never yearned for adventure or glory. He wanted nothing more than his books and his contraptions to be happy. And yet he had been locked into an endless war after only mere months on the throne. Now, five years later, the front was finally at their doorstep. He was to ride to the last stronghold on the Verdant Fields, the only place Lisborne could hope to keep the enemy at bay.

They made it so far into this war with Hadrian safe with Ilya in the castle, allowing their generals to lead while he poured over maps and battle plans and strategies, and sent along his orders, and trained. Oh, how he trained. But training could do little on a scholar’s body, and their time was now at an end. Ilya could do nothing but stand by and watch as her baby brother rode off to command their forces, and pray to the Goddess that their armies did not fall.

She swallowed the lump that threatened to rise in her throat. She swallowed the pleas for Hadrian to give up the command and stay safe here in the castle that threatened to rise, too. It was pointless. Their forces needed their King more than Ilya needed her brother safe. This was the price to be paid for the crown.

For now, all she could offer to Hadrian was this – the safety of her arms and a listening ear. A weakness no one else could be allowed to see. And a promise to hold the throne until his return. 

If he returned.

“Promise me you’ll come home,” the words suddenly slipped out, thick and warbled. Hadrian tried to raise his head, alarmed, but Ilya kept her chin in place and only tightened her grip so he couldn’t move. “Whether it be in triumph or in chains, promise me you’ll return to me alive. If Lisborne is to fall, we fall together, okay?”

A weighty silence settled over them for a long moment. Then Hadrian’s arms encircled her waist and drew her close. Returning the hug. “I promise.”

They held each other without speaking. Each lost in their own worries and fears about the battle to come. 

Ilya was the first to stir. She pulled Hadrian back gently by the shoulders, brushed out the front of his tunic where it had been wrinkled and mussed. 

“My true aim in coming through the portrait was to see you to bed tonight,” she said. “I’ll sleep here, too. We can pretend it’s a sleepover, like we did when we were small.”

Hadrian finally lifted a bloodshot gaze to her own, his smile weak and watery. “You don’t have to do that.”

“And risk you getting right up again the moment I leave?” Ilya raised an eyebrow, tilting her head. It earned her a weak chuckle from him. “As I thought. To bed with you. Come on.”

She stood, tugging on him and urging him to his feet, until he finally stood with a heaved groan.

“You look just like Mother when you make that face,” Hadrian complained, but he let her drag him along all the same. Back to the four-poster canopy bed in the far corner of the room, swathed in darkness. 

Ilya chuckled and rolled her eyes, but made no reply. He practically collapsed onto the bed where she pushed him to sit, and she made quick work to unlace his boots, swatting his hands away when he tried to reach for them himself.

“Covers,” she instructed, and turned to stoke the dying embers of the fire in the large stone fireplace. Pointless to try to call for a servant that the guard wouldn’t let in. Ilya added a log or two from the pile as the rustle of blankets answered from behind her. By the time she unwound her night shawl from her shoulders, discarded along a chair, and turned back to the bed, Hadrian made himself comfortable beneath the covers and held them up for her to join him.

Ilya crawled into the space he made for her and settled down with only a minor bit of squirming. She rolled over to face him, tucking her hands under her cheek. Hadrian mirrored her actions. It really did look just like how it used to when they shared a bed as children.

“Your bed isn’t quite as comfortable as I remember,” she hummed.

“The Royal Physician said firmer bedding was better for the back.”

“Hmm, so the Royal Physician believes you’re an old man.”

She could see Hadrian’s grin in the shadows from the firelight playing over his face.

“Or, some of us need to be able to get out of bed without being swallowed by a cloud,” he retorted.

“I am perfectly content remaining trapped within a cloud of pillows and blankets, thank you,” Ilya said with a giggle. Then she reached out and tapped her index finger on Hadrian’s nose. “Go to sleep, Your Majesty.”

“Yes, Mother,” Hadrian muttered, and Ilya couldn’t help herself from giggling along with him.

“If I catch you out of bed, I will ask the guard to tie you to the bedposts.”

“Empty threat.”

“Oh, is it? I wouldn’t ask the poor thing to determine where his loyalties lie when it’s so late, if I were you. It would put him in quite a spot. And also question how I came to be in here.”

This time it was Hadrian’s finger tapping on her nose. “Go to sleep, Your Grace.”

Ilya affected a large, loud yawn. “Yes, Your Majesty. I live to serve by your pleasure. Unlike someone who must be put to bed like a child.”

“Ilyana, how am I to sleep if you keep talking?”

“You started it! Empty threat.“

“Okay, okay,” Hadrian chuckled and rolled over, so his back was to her. “Good night, Ilya.”

“Good night, Hadrian.”

Ilya counted up to 250 before she heard his breathing even out to the slow pace of sleep. It wasn’t as high as she expected to get. Clearly the exhaustion really did weigh heavy on him. Now that he was asleep, she had little doubt he wouldn’t stir until his attendants came to wake him in the dawn light to prepare for the march. She turned onto her back, let her eyes slide closed. 

Tomorrow, Hadrian set out to defend their kingdom against an unrelenting enemy. Whether the kingdom lived or fell, whether her brother would return in triumph or in chains, all rested on the Verdant Fields.

The Vraskan Empire was coming. And it was all Ilya’s fault.

That ugly thought, and a prayer to keep Hadrian safe, sent Ilya off to sleep.