Doves and Peacocks
The Milkshake Stand
Aleigh Luzerno, Arcane Prince of Astra, was presently enjoying what few royals ever did: a perfectly ordinary afternoon.
He was, of course, doing so at the insistence of Ruthenia, who had sought his company at her favourite milkshake stand this afternoon, and although he found the commoners’ habit of taking short meals in between errands somewhat baffling, he could not possibly have resisted her invitation even if he’d had a reason to.
To be perfectly honest he didn’t know when Ruthenia, once no more than a despicable pest to him, had crossed the line—these several lines—to become someone whose company he hated the very thought of losing.
All he did know was how he felt, watching her fish an argent out of her pouch in the heady afternoon light. A dizzying mixture of elation and shame.
She'd never look his way; he knew she wouldn’t. He knew he didn’t deserve the attention he wanted. And that was just too bad, for he had never wanted something so much before.
Aleigh remembered the day he had first spoken to Ruthenia in person. He remembered how she had said, with the earnestness no one else in Astra ever did spare him, that she didn’t care who he was.
He had been paralysed for a while, bereft of his response. Who was she, to reject everything Astran society stood for?
A reflexive wave of disgust had overcome him. But he had later found, to his bewilderment, that he had enjoyed hearing her say it and that—more disturbingly—he had wanted to hear her say it again.
Ruthenia, as he gradually learned, held a molten desire to disrupt systems at the core of her being. Every time they had met thereafter, she had spoken with the same wild abandon—whether to confirm the details of that first perfunctory transaction, or for her to scold him. As if she saw no hierarchical difference between them—as if it were irrelevant to her.
Just like that, she had flung him right out of his comfortable ideological niche, and as many deflective things as he had said in response, insolent, deplorable Ruthenia Cendina had wedged herself in his thoughts.
Several things had transpired since. He had learned that she was the daughter of a genuine martyr—and that she hated him, and hated them, because it was the only response she knew how to have, to the trauma of watching them tear her life from under her feet.
Ruthenia had opened him to the radical notion that she—and everyone else—was as complicated and as confused as he was, and he’d ceased to detest her behaviour—even to feel ashamed for having believed her beyond reason.
Then, as the story goes, surprise became curiosity and curiosity led him to interest and greater efforts to know more about her, culminating in a well-disguised invitation to Anio and Cathia’s wedding, and then that interest had grown to...
What was this, really?
Aleigh had been attached to someone before, a young lady named Orpa, for all of one year. He had entered the attachment at the behest of his brother, acceding partly because he’d foreseen no ill coming of having a partner.
To no one’s surprise but his, it had been a cold affair—growing colder still when her desires had turned to demands and it had become apparent that the attachment was how she obliged him to spoil her.
Breaking it off had been difficult. Aligon had made very certain to remind Aleigh at every turn that his love, like everything else they owned, was but a boon to be bestowed only upon those whose elevation would benefit the family. Orpa had, of course, been the perfect subject of such an advancement: the union would have served not only to absorb the first heir of their foremost rivals into the Luzerno family, but also to bolster the family’s reputation through association with the Mirenes.
Naturally, Aligon had resisted every mention of a detachment until, in secret, he had slipped out of the palace and delivered the message to Orpa by himself. His brother had refused to acknowledge his existence for an entire week thereafter.
That, in hindsight, must have been the moment his relationship with his brother had begun to degenerate, and the sting of the memory had been enough to keep him unquestioningly obedient for the two years since.
Well, that story was long past and irrelevant, for here he was, now—standing beside the girl who had recently made herself Aligon’s worst enemy.
She laid the argent on the countertop, and laughed again, wiping a tear from her eye. “Ihir, just look at me.”
As he stared on, Aleigh thought upon those many lessons he’d learned throughout his life so far. About never giving away for free anything that could fetch a price. The lessons taught by the same people who’d courted his title, his reputation, and his monetary worth, without a care for who he might be.
No one had ever said Aleigh Luzerno was good enough without his title. No one had treated him as any better than an exquisite wall portrait.
The storekeeper placed the glass of honey milkshake on the counter with a bright clink. Thanking her, Ruthenia pushed the one-argent milkshake across the wood towards him, beaming brighter than the sunset beyond her.
All the gods above and below knew—and now he knew it, too—that love was not given and taken at will. It arrived unbidden, outside of one’s control. He supposed he would have to live with repeated reminders of this fact for as long as Ruthenia Fulminare Cendina was in his life.