The High Queen slid through the passage to meet with her imprisoned love, her path dimly illuminated by the flickering candle in her hands.
There would be hell to pay for this the next morning with her advisors - for sneaking out of her apartments in the dead of night, alone and unguarded, for sneaking out to meet a criminal in the prison reserved for the worst of the worst, the bottom barrel of the scum which populated the royal dungeons.
For thinking of him at all, even after the terrible crime he'd committed against her.
A single tear rolled down her cheek, spattering on the dry, dusty floor of the dungeon. It was reminiscent of the way the High Queen's beloved had painted the floor of the throne room with her husband's lifeblood.
The scene haunted her, day and night. It featured in all of her nightmares. Scott on the ground, a sword stuck in his stomach, all the way up to a golden hilt as familiar to her as its owner's kisses.
And Gerald, looming tall over the too-still body of the king, his eyes dark and defiant, an empty scabbard hanging at his side.
That darkness, that defiance. It marked his eyes even now, though his face was more haggard, his back more hunched, his hair more brittle.
It faded when the High Queen slipped the hood off her head, replaced by recognition and disbelief. He righted himself, ignoring the rattling of the chains that bound his wrists and ankles, running to the bars.
"Miranda," he rasped. Her name - the one she'd traded for the throne when she had been just twenty one years old. Back when she had been the daughter of a tradesman whose dreams eclipsed her lineage's, hidden perpetually behind a curtain of raven-black hair. Back when he had been a brash boy with nothing to his name but the friendship of a royal prince and some skill with a sword.
"What are you doing down here?"
"Gerald," she said the traitor's name softly, her voice colder than the draughts that found their way into his cell at nighttime, an icy epicentre devoid of all warmth.
His shoulders sagged. "Don't tell me you believe I did it."
"What else is left to believe? You killed Scott, and in so doing, killed any love I might have had for you."
His eyes narrowed. "That's a lie, Mira, and you know it. Why else would you be down here?"
"I came to say goodbye." She swallowed almost imperceptibly, but the prisoner caught the brief hesitation in her movement which proved him right, though the words that followed it condemned him. "You will be executed tomorrow at dawn, by the noose. It will be a private execution on the tower green. Much better than what a man of your station and crime deserves."
"But I didn't do it!" He grasped the bars of his cell tightly, desperate to see even the slightest shadow of love cross her face. He was desperate in the way a man in a desert was desperate. Chasing after a mirage, convinced it would lead him to freshwater.
"Please, Mira." His eyes were wild. "It was not me. I found him like that and I was about to step away, about to alert the guards, when you burst into the throne room with a bevy of advisors at your back."
She stepped away from him, setting the candle on the ground. She turned her back to him, so that he wouldn't see the conflict in her eyes. "I don't know what to believe anymore, Gerald."
The real reason she wouldn't look at him. On the day of the incident, her eyes had told her one story, her heart another. She was worried if she turned around now, they would tell her the same thing, their message unified.
"I would never hurt him, Mira," he breathed. "He was my best friend. You both were."
That sentence accomplished what a thousand advisors and diplomats had never achieved. It broke the High Queen.
"And you... you were mine. Still are." She brushed the corner of her right eye, killing the tear before it could form fully. Her voice cracked. "I'm so sorry, Jerald."
"Come here."
The bars separating them melted under the heat of their embrace. Her tongue traversed his cracked lips, exploring the crevices of his mouth for what would be the last time. At dawn, he would be cold but for now, he was warmer than the sun.
The High Queen knew without a doubt that her lover was innocent of the crime for which he was to die. His only crime had been to stand in the way of the High Queen's greatness. The same crime for which the High Queen had tried her husband, and found him guilty beyond measure.
At the age of thirty-one, a decade after she'd traded her name for a throne, Miranda Sumner, tradeswoman by birth and High Queen by marriage, traded two loves for a crown.
