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On the day of the wedding, you cry.
They are not tears of happiness.
Maybe a little. You are happy for them, after all. Finally being with each other, the kingdom prospering, them expecting a child soon.
It still hurts.
You wanted to stand next to them. You wanted to be by their sides for as long as they stayed by yours. But you knew. You were an insignificant, filthy bat. As much as you despised the Senate, they had an iron grip over it all. You were tainted blood, a lowly animal not worthy of even their gazes.
You knew it was already a blessing to be so close to the two of them, to become someone they could trust and call a friend. But you were still greedy. Their love and attention was a drug you could never stop chasing. You would do anything for them; kill, lie, destroy, love.
But you were a friend.
Not a lover.
You weren’t promised a forever with them. They were with each other, and you had no place besides or, daresay, between them.
So you strangle your tears in your throat and claw the sobs tearing through your lungs back down like nothing happened.
When they walk down that aisle, when they see you standing there pitifully, your armor for once discarded for a simple suit, they’ll ask you: Dear Lilia, why are your beautiful red eyes so watery? Why is your smile so faded? And your heart will tremble in their grasp, so full of love yet so full of anguish. You want to tell them that you love them. You want to say, “Let me walk down the aisle with you.”
Instead, you laugh and call them tears of joy. Your king and queen—Your friends—are getting married. What is there to cry about other than the joyous occasion?
You offer congratulations and laugh over wine with them. Maleanor’s radiant smile and Raverne’s quick and wry wit. You fall in love again and again, memorizing the lines of their smiles and the joy breaking through glassy, tear-clouded eyes. Both look so regal and noble in their fine-tailored clothes, yet all you can see is them as children when you played together. In your mind, there is no king or queen. Only a small Maleanor clinging to a young Lilia, begging for more time together. Only a book-obsessed Raverne trying to beat Lilia in swordfighting through reading alone. Thousands of bright memories float to the surface. Glimmering stars, yet strangely unwelcome as though they are resurfaced corpses.
It hurts too much.
They go on to the vows. Everyone cheers. You smile but say nothing. Later on, you will wish you did.
Lilia cries alone at dawn. He wishes he had remembered.
Maybe they would have loved him. Maybe it would have gotten him through it all. Then again, he doesn’t know if anything would have.
The tears come silently, and then they pour. Rivers of centuries long gone, the crumbled decadence of civilization forgotten. The world at a standstill. The only thing Lilia can see are those two throughout their lives. When they played as children. When they studied together and could barely keep awake. When they snuck food to Lilia because he didn't have enough. When Maleanor fought to keep him as a general. When Raverne fired every servant that dared speak ill of Lilia. When they smiled and danced in tandem with their hearts as one. When Raverne had cast one long, pained look before floating out the door on that rainy night. When the Dawn Knight’s apologies were whispered into the wind as he bumped Lilia and Baur while hiding Malleus’ egg. When his silent tears wrecked his body with tremors that broke him as he killed Maleanor. The echoing screams that sliced through the air on that day—Lilia’s, Baur’s, Maleanor’s, the Dawn Knight’s. A shattering silence that followed, brittle as bones and weak as human will. The wind casting its howling gales in mourning sounds so similar to today’s.
Lilia looks at the calendar.
It’s never marked anywhere in human or fae history. They still don’t know when it was exactly.
Lilia does.
Every year, the clock reminds him.
In the dead of winter, the sun had shone to illuminate the Dawn Knight’s glory.
At 7:00 AM on January 1, in time immemorial, Maleanor Draconia was gone.
The queen of the fae, descendant of the Thorn Fairy herself, had selfishly taken one more soul to accompany her.
Every 7:00 AM on January 1, Lilia Vanrouge is supposed to celebrate his birthday. He is supposed to smile and laugh and tease his beloved sons as they move around the day to make him happy.
Lilia Vanrouge can’t.
But he can.
His birthday is on January 1, at 7:00 AM sharp. When the clouds shift and the sun rises and filters its glorious rays through windows on the 500th anniversary of the fall of the Briar Valley Fae, it is never Lilia Vanrouge who rises.
Ever since the first morning, it hasn’t been Lilia for a long time.
Lilia Vanrouge hides in a corner of his mind. Malleus is fine with him. Silver is fine with him. Sebek is fine with him. Cater isn’t, but he knows better than to pry.
Maybe you could have saved them if you showed them how much you loved.
Maybe you could have run away with Raverne and brought Maleanor with you. And Malleus, and Baur and even the Dawn Knight.
But what-ifs are for people who think things can change.
And though someone else on NRC’s grounds may wonder just the same, it is not his time or place to do anything about it.
It has been 500 years, and one other person knows both the date and Lilia Vanrouge.
He’ll never share it.
But he’ll discard his crow mask and pour some wine for three unnamed gravestones at that exact time.
One for himself, one for his beloved wife, and one for his dear old lover friend.