A Good Day

AN: This is my entry for the Hamiathes's Gift 2017. The prompt was: "Irene has a fun day. Everything goes well for her and she gets to genuinely enjoy herself. Eugenides doesn't trick her about anything, but maybe she plays a little trick on him."

The kingdom of Attolia celebrated an annual holiday termed as The Statutory Merrymaking in place of the Queen of Attolia's birthday because nobody knew when she was born.

Like any sensible country loyal to its sovereign, Attolia had a tradition of observing its rulers' day of birth. However in the first year of her reign, the Queen of Attolia had faced a tremendous assortment of political shenanigans that celebration had been far from her mind. Things had remained rather bleak in her second year. By the time the third had rolled around, Attolia had felt it quite odd to reinstate the traditional holiday. Relius had urged her to do it anyway to further cement her position as rightful queen, and she would have agreed with him had it not been for the diminishing size of their treasury. There had been a drought in the southern part of the country as well, and when several of her barons heard talk that she might declare a national holiday in her name, whispers of greed and corruption echoed after her for weeks.

And so, to placate everyone – the people who wanted a holiday, Relius who wanted her to display some eminence, and the barons who would mock her for it – Attolia established The Statutory Merrymaking on a random summer day.

Her own birthday – known to very few in the first place – slowly slipped from people's memories as the years passed, those she trusted dwindled, relatives and close acquaintances passed or moved away, and nobody anymore dared to ask.

-o-

Irene woke up to the crisp chill of the first autumn winds, the sheer golden drapes on her window dancing in the early morning light. Not too long ago, she would have loathed having her windows in any state other than tightly closed and perhaps even bolted. The fact that they were not and no longer needed to be reminded her of the body lying next to her.

Sleepily, she looked at her king, his face a rare image of calm and docility. She did not get many chances to see him like this. She leaned over a little and lifted his nightshirt to his waist to inspect the wound he'd obtained in the assassination attempt many weeks ago. The wound was shallower now and the flesh around it was no longer so swollen, but when her king exercised his stubborn streak and went gallivanting who knew where, sometimes the skin still split and bled.

It looked okay for now. He must have heeded her unsubtle warning these past few days for once. Satisfied, she patted his shirt back down. She was about to return to her pillow when she found Eugenides observing her, his sleepy eyes half-open with a devilish glint, his lips curled in a saucy smile.

"By all means, please enjoy yourself," he whispered.

She resisted the warmth that threatened to redden her cheeks. She turned away from him, muttering, "I'm surprised you stayed until past dawn this time." He never had before. She suspected it was because he wanted to see the sunrise from the view his own windows afforded him.

He shrugged. "I do like to change things up from time to time."

"Well I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."

He stared at her, no doubt waiting for a cutting remark or a morbid joke foretelling bodily harm, but she had none in her mind. It was too early in the morning yet, and Irene had just realized what day it was.

She looked at the curtains again, the upcoming scheduled events running through her mind. There would be breakfast with her king, just like usual. Afterwards was a meeting with several of her ministers and barons to discuss the war with Sounis. Lunch came after, a private one thankfully, and in the afternoon she would hold an audience to some supplicants. There would be court dinner, and then everyone would be free to retire to their own business.

Today was a very typical day.

"I think," Eugenides said beside her. "I think it would be a good day."

She nodded, hoping he was right. A good day was when her most bitter enemy was merely her memories.

-o-

When Attolia ascended the throne, the scribes who memorialized the event in history never spoke of her time as a minor princess. They all began the same way: she had been the second child of Attolis, had become more prominent after her brother's death, then had made herself queen after her father's. Most of the details revolved around the murder of her husband and the subsequent steps she took to keep the throne firmly under her grip. Never had anyone probed the shadows for her past, nor had anyone really cared by that point.

But just like any normal human being, the Shadow Princess had been born much the same way as any other. Irene came into the world screaming, though with not much kicking, subdued only by the tender touch of her mother, who had perished two days later from blood loss. Irene's nurse told her that after hearing the baby was a girl, her father had taken one look at her, nodded his head, and had not visited the nursery again.

Her nurse told her she had been an unremarkable baby, neither prone to tantrums nor to exuberant giggles. The nurse loved that about her, because Irene could be set in a crib while her nurse attended to other things without a lot of distraction.

-o-

The audience with the supplicants ended much earlier than Irene estimated. They usually limited the queue to around fifty each afternoon; despite that, oftentimes there would still be people left unable to make their petitions. Remarkably, Attolia was able to get through all fifty that afternoon with time to spare. None had asked for something time-consuming to resolve. Most wanted to settle simple debts or argued about property borders, things that Attolia could find a solution to after asking only several questions. Her king did not even need to speak up about anything.

He was not as studiously reticent as he had been before. Sometimes he would even pipe up a decent answer without anyone prodding him. But mostly he left her to her own devices.

After Dite's banishment, Sejanus's imprisonment, and the showdown with the Guard, the court tiptoed around him almost as much as they did around her. As far as she knew, most of them now believed that he was a master swordsman. However, whatever wiles they attributed to him only went as far as saying he was clever enough to choose her side. They still did not believe he was sly enough on his own to manage her unruly court himself.

But Irene, out of all people, knew how incorrigible the Attolian court could be when it came to their attachments. The fact that their opinions changed at all within less than a year of him being king was still impressive to her.

Attolia and her king walked the halls to return to their apartments. Around them were the assortment of attendants and guards that accompanied them everywhere.

"What are you planning to do before dinner?" Eugenides asked her.

She shrugged. "There are plenty of things for me to look into." She had yet to read the stack of paperwork on her desk. She also wanted to think more about the increasing agitation on the northern borders. And she was not going to lie to herself: a nap sounded delicious right about now.

"Want to tackle the deep end?" Eugenides suggested. Attolia almost slowed her walking.

"Now?" she asked. "Do we have time for something like that?"

"We have over an hour!" Eugenides countered. "Trust me, you'll pick it up in fifteen minutes."

She didn't believe him, but they detoured from their path to the apartments and headed down to the lowest level of the palace. Behind a set of large, heavy oak doors was a wide private bath, the pool glittering with clear waters that reflected the turquoise tiles beneath.

A month ago, Irene had sheepishly asked her husband if he could teach her how to swim. He eagerly assented. In the small pockets of free time they could get since then, he began teaching her some very basic skills like how to hold her breath under water for a suitable amount of time or how to propel herself through the water with kicks and strokes. The entire time they remained on the shallower side of the pool.

They left the guards and Attolis's attendants at the entrance of the pool room. Some of Attolia's own attendants waited outside while a few helped them prepare. They were the older ones like Phresine, who were not shy about seeing their king in only his under garments. They helped both Irene and Eugenides out of their formal clothing, and when Gen was in nothing but his inner breaches, he jumped like a canon ball into the deep end of the pool, causing a huge splash of water to shoot up into the air.

He surfaced only a moment later to grin at her, and Irene had a sharp reprimand at the tip of her tongue but his genuine smile slowed her. An attendant tugged at the jewels in her hair, and another handed her a thin shift that would not hinder her limbs when she swam. His little deed was forgotten.

Only one of her attendants knew how to swim and was comfortable enough with both of them to attend them in the waters. Leda had taken off the outer layers of her dress as well, and she sat at the edge of the pool with her legs in the water. Her eyes were vigilant as Irene lowered herself in the shallow end.

The first time she dipped herself in the pool, Eugenides had asked her if she was afraid. With the windows high up on the walls catching the rays of sun, and the light bouncing off the surface of the water, Irene had been mesmerized enough not to fear anything. She had felt quite serene.

But Eugenides's lessons were not sugar coated. Even in the shallower end, where she knew that the chances of her drowning was almost zero, sometimes she still caught herself feeling afraid. It was in the moments when she was running out of breath but she knew it was not time to surface her head yet; or when the minutes stretched on and on and her muscles burned with being so taught, but Eugenides told her to do one more lap. She had wondered then about atrocious things like what if her muscles all cramped up and she did drown? What if she would never learn?

Still, when she performed well he would say so. And he would tap the places in her form that needed improvement – knees slightly crooked, ankles not pointed, arms flappy, chin not tucked in enough. He would tell her to rest, and he'd show her some nice tricks like doing headstands in the water or somersaults. He was as graceful underwater as he was above it, and she envied him a little.

"I could teach you those too!" he had offered, but she turned him down.

"No thank you," she had said. "I just want to survive a shipwreck."

Now, Eugenides glided toward her to the edge of the shallow floor. "Come here," he said.

"Are we going to the deep part now?" she asked. "I don't know how to tread yet."

"That's why we're going there," he answered.

"Teach me to tread first."

"It would be hard to do in the shallow end," he said. "You might hurt your feet if you accidentally bang them on the tiles. No, the only way to learn to tread is to learn it in the deep end."

"But–"

He enclosed her wrist with his hand and pulled her. In that second, she crossed the threshold where the pool floor dropped several feet. In her panic, she clung to Eugenides with both sets of limbs, pushing against his buoyancy to lift herself as high above the water surface as possible. His head dipped below, and he had to kick hard to resurface. She almost felt sorry for him if her heart wasn't gripped by terror for herself. In any case, he came up laughing.

"It's okay!" he said. "I got you."

He snaked his handless arm around her waist and used the other arm to move them to the middle of the deep section, where he knew she would not be able to grasp for the edges and pull herself to safety. He must have sensed her increased tension because he reassured her again. She heard a splash, and looked behind her to find Leda wading in the water toward them, just in case the king needed some extra help.

"All right," Eugenides began. "Floating is actually really easy."

She frowned at him.

He smiled and chuckled, "What I mean is that it's easy to learn. To be good at it, well, it's like any other skill. You just have to practice a lot and develop your muscles. The first thing you need to do is forget everything I've taught you in the shallow end."

"Um… why did you teach them to me then?"

"To get you comfortable in the water," he explained. "Everything you've learned will help you move. Treading is fine if you want to stay in place, but you can't possibly float forever. At some point, you might want to actually get on dry land, right?"

"Okay, so what do I do?"

"Forget about the straight legs and straight arms. Especially forget about the tucked chin. When I release you, I want you to lift your chin up so that your face is always above water. I want you to run as fast as you can, kick as hard as you can, and I want you to sweep your hands back and forth across the surface. You get it?"

Irene got it, but she did not want to do it yet. She peered through the water again, and even at this depth, the water was so clear that she could see the tiled floor beneath, so so far below her.

"Hey," he whispered. "You're going to be fine. I will be just two paces away."

"Two?"

"That's really close!" he laughed. "I will be able to reach you with my arms. Look, you're not going to learn if you keep clinging to me."

She realized that she was. She straddled his waist like a baby, and her arms could smother him if she held on any tighter. She felt embarrassed and shocked and even a little bit ashamed, that the queen of Attolia could be so afraid of something not even sentient, and how that prompted her to be so physically needy and helpless. It was even more astonishing to her the amount of trust she burdened Eugenides with to keep her alive and comfortable, when months earlier she would have never even entertained the idea of delegating that responsibility to anyone but herself.

So when he asked if she was ready, she forced herself to be so.

He let go.

She clenched her eyes, moved her legs as fast she she could, running like he told her so. She lifted her chin and looked up at the ceiling, feeling the surface of the water creep up her neck, her chin and her ears, until all she could hear was the muffled sound of her heavy breathing. She resisted the urge to flap her arms like wings, and instead tried to scull the surface like Eugenides said.

She did not know how long that moment lasted; it felt very long and very short at the same time. She was hyperfocused and very much aware of her hyperfocus that she suspected it had not been very long at all. She was going to go under any second now. Keeping herself above water for only a couple of seconds was not bad at first try, right?

"Good job, Irene," she heard Eugenides say somewhere nearby.

Irene kept kicking, feeling the burn on her thighs, the tightness of her midsection. When she felt the waterline reach her cheeks she knew she was getting tired. A warmth pressed against her, and she found Eugenides hoisting her again against his hip.

"Good job," he repeated, a proud smile on his lips.

She allowed herself to relax, arms winding about his shoulders.

"How long did I last?" she asked, almost afraid to hear an answer less than five seconds.

"It was a minute."

"A minute?" She searched his face for a jest, but it wasn't there.

He laughed. "See, I told you it was easy."

She finally returned his smile. And for the next half hour they remained practicing, there was a warmth in her that was more than the effect of exertion.

-o-

As a minor princess, Irene did not get large feasts for her birthday, but she did receive some gifts from close family members and those who wanted to curry favour from her father. It was only when she became queen that that stopped, since most of her court already feared or disliked her. Thus as a teenager, she would pick a meal and say a small greeting to herself. 'Happy birthday,' she would think. Then she would eat, and that was that. When her birthdays fell on particularly lousy days, she would say instead, 'It may not be happy, but it's still your birthday, so there.'

Eventually she forgot to say anything to herself at all, sometimes even forgetting the day until it already passed.

-o-

Moving on land again felt strange after being so weightless in the water. After the dinner tables had been cleared and the hall readied for dancing, Irene did not think she would be so graceful on the dance floor. It had been hours after her swimming lessons and her limbs still felt heavy. Sometimes she would still feel the surge of water pressing against her.

Despite that, Irene allowed herself to be led down the dais, hand in hand with her king. The musicians began to play a mid-tempo song, and they got into position facing each other, one of her hands in his, the other on his shoulder. This close she could get a whiff of his perfume. She hadn't smelled that particular one on him before.

"Is that citrus?" she asked, as he led her into a gentle spin. It smelled mildly tangy, with floral accents and undertones of musk.

"Orange blossom, to be exact," he corrected her as they slowed for several beats. "It's new."

"I thought so," she said.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes."

She thought he was going to make some snarky joke about it, but he just smiled without pretension and spun her again. His scent lingered in the air the entire time they danced.

-o-

"Happy birthday to me," Irene had thought that morning at breakfast with Eugenides.

-o-

Phresine was brushing her hair when Eugenides crept into her apartments that night. Nobody was surprised anymore when he suddenly showed up. If one of her attendants turned around to find him lounging in a chair that had been empty a moment before, they had learned to suppress their yelps and squeaks, and now merely welcomed him with exasperated huffs.

He paced behind her chair by the vanity, waiting until Phresine had braided her hair into a neat line down her back. When her attendant moved away, that was when he came close, and he embraced her tightly from behind. He gave her cheek a long, tender kiss. He often showed her affection when they were in her rooms, but this seemed a little different. She was about to ask him what was wrong, when out of his pocket he fished out a long, rectangular package wrapped in gold sheet and tied with silk ribbons.

"Happy birthday," he whispered in her ear.

She heard the mild gasps of her women behind her, but they seemed far away. "It's your birthday, Your Majesty?" she heard them asking, but all she could think about was the nice little gift in his hand. For a breathless moment it was all she could comprehend. She lifted her gaze and looked at him through the mirror.

"How did you know?"

He shrugged in a self-satisfied manner. "Oh, I know everything."

"Nobody knows my birthday," she said softly. Nobody wrote about it or spoke about it. It was almost as if she came out of the blue which, to the people who knew her only as queen, was probably as true as it could get.

She lifted the package from his palm and settled it on her vanity.

"Aren't you going to open it?" he asked, his chin resting on her shoulder, his lips soft and warm against her ear.

She did not want to. She wanted to keep it wrapped up and looking pretty for as long as possible; she wanted to keep the anticipation and mystery feeling new. She had not felt like this for so, so long. She could not remember a time someone gave her something out of a wish to make her happy, not as a bribe or for political gain or flattery or payment.

"Thank you," she forced the words out of her mouth, even though her throat felt tight.

She turned her head to look straight into his eyes, the events of the day flashing through her mind. She felt the small, solid pride of having learned how to tread in deep waters. His orange scent remained strong even now, and she remembered their dance. It was the same dance she had danced alone all those years ago, except this time she was surrounded by people who, if not completely trustworthy, had at least been in their best behaviour.

She shook her head. "Even the smooth meeting with the barons this morning? And the quick audience this afternoon? Was that all you?"

He gave a chortle as he sat beside her on the bench by the vanity. "Ah, no. You're giving me too much credit," he said, and she could tell he was being honest. "I was relieved too that your barons and ministers didn't give you a headache, and I think the short audience was a lucky break. If I knew the stars would align to actually give you a good day today, I wouldn't have given you so many gifts. But I prepared the perfume and the dance just in case something fouls your mood, and the swim was a momentary inspiration."

He paused, but then shook his head. "Actually, scratch that. I think I would still give you as many gifts as I can, because you deserve them."

You are a treasure beyond price, he had told her before. Irene fingered the smooth gold sheet of the gift. She reached for the length of the ribbon, tugged the knot loose, and pulled the sheet away to reveal a heavy wooden case beneath. Holding her breath, she lifted the lid, and found inside a sparkling net of diamonds, linked by tiny silver chains and punctuated by small ruby stones.

It was such a stunning necklace, that Irene almost regretted that the first thing that came out of her mouth was, "Oh my king, did you steal this?"

He erupted in a violent bout of laughter.

She gulped, wondering if she had insulted him. It took him a while to gather himself.

"Now you're not giving me enough credit," he said.

"I suppose you would think it's an honour, blessed by your god?"

"I'm not a thief anymore," he pointed out. "And I suppose you won't? Think it an honour, I mean."

Truthfully, Irene would be quite disappointed if the first gift she'd received in over a decade was stolen from someone else.

"I would politely order you to give it back," she answered. "But it doesn't mean I don't appreciate the thought."

He waved his hand to dismiss her concern. "Bought from a Ferrian jeweler with the taxes that one of your sneaky little barons had just started paying again."

She fingered the tightly woven silver links, the winking diamonds and the deep rubies.

"Do you like it?"

"I do." Then she asked again, "How did you know?"

"You really have no idea?" he shook his head as if surprised she could miss something so obvious. "Helen told me. You two grew up together."

Ah, Irene did not think of Eddis. Until recently the other queen did not concern herself with Attolia's personal matters. She was surprised Helen remembered at all.

"You were right," Irene admitted.

"About what?"

"That it would be a good day." She smiled at him, and they sat in companionable silence.

AN: Aaaah, okay, I had this idea and ran away with it. But as I neared the end, I realized how implausible it was that nobody knew of Attolia's birthday. Like, Relius would obviously know, and the only way nobody would celebrate it is if Attolia herself disregarded it forcefully. Yikes, obvious plot hole, but oh well. Let's say this is an AU, hehe.

Anyway, I hope you like this! I worry that it's not "fun" enough, but because I imagine Irene to be quite stoic, this is the most fun I think she can have.