A Land Long Since Burned to Ash

1-What is grief, if not love persevering?

TW: terminal illness and parental death mentions and references throughout chapter, if you have to skip pls comment at the end and I'll give you a summary 💙

"To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever"- Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

Elara Ashryver

Elara Ashryver was sick.

The wasting sickness that plagued her body had been slowly draining her for months now. She could feel it, her life force slowly ebbing away even now as she sat and watched her very reasons for living.

Two young children splashing in the river that flowed around the edge of their manor. Golden hair and blue eyes ringed with gold. Her daughter had only recently turned seven and yet despite the youth that emanated from her, her mind had always seemed far more mature. She hadn't been able to tell her yet. How do you tell a child that their mother, a figure that they see as undefeatable, is being destroyed by an invisible force far beyond their understanding? By an illness that not even the greatest healers Wendlyn has to offer can truly understand.

The other child, a boy of age nine, was fiercely protective of his family and she thought he would do well serving his younger cousin in Terrasen when she became queen. His name was Aedion, her son, a boy who many would look at and remark on his likeness to his mother. Elara knew better. The boy was the spitting image of his father, a fae whom Elara had loved almost as much as she loved her children. She would never see him again and no one would know of the male she'd loved, of the male who her sweet boy took after.

"Are you alright" spoke a soft voice who'd come up behind her. She'd been so deep in contemplation that she hadn't noticed Adrien Galythynius walk up to come sit beside her.

Adrien Galythynius had been her closest friend and confidant since the years she had spent visiting the Royal Court of Terrasen as a child, and now he was her husband. They felt no deep romantic love for one another, Elara did not feel she could love another again after Aedion's father and yet a marriage had been arranged regardless. Her father, the king, had claimed it was to further strengthen the alliance with Terrasen through a marriage to another of its princes but she knew better. Their alliance with Terrasen was ancient and unbreakable, this marriage had been arranged to soothe the scandal of the daughter of the King of Wendlyn bearing a bastard son to a man that none had ever seen.

"Elara?" the voice came again, once again breaking through her thoughts.
"Hmm?"
"I asked if you were alright, is your head still hurting, what about your joints?" her husband questioned, poorly concealed concern lacing his tone.
Elara sighed, wishing that she'd never mentioned the aches and pains that came along with her slow death.
"I'm alright, tired that's all" she murmured.

In response an arm wrapped around her shoulder, pulling her to rest her head on his shoulder.

"Everything is sorted for the trip to Terrasen come the start of next month, and they've begun to clean out Riverside for us"

Riverside was the constituency in Terrasen that Adrien presided over, and their home when they stayed there. Soon, it would be her children's primary home, and they would no longer split their time equally between Wendlyn and Terrasen. She'd already made her husband swear to still bring her children back to the small coastal town that she was the Lady of. It would after all become her only legitimate child with her husband's after she passed. Glancing back to the girl splashing in the river, she felt an ache in her chest. Her daughter Aderyn was far too young to inherit that title, even if it was in name only until she came of age.