Had QueenNie feels, 0/10 would not recommend.
Started as meta, turned into fic??
Thesis statement:
Nie losing her Queen is terrible. Tragic. Especially in light of everything that comes after with Descendant.
But.
Consider it from Queen’s POV.
You love this woman, this Jinn so much that you defy court practice and all of your most leal advisors to take her for your wife. And you know the risks. You know that she could be dangerous, deadly without ever even meaning it, and so you take all the precautions. Even if they’re meaningless, even if they don’t help, you’d try anything that meant you got to keep her.
And then. One terrible, awful night, you say something thoughtless. You almost Wish, and you feel the power of it crackle between you. You see the fear in her eyes as she shushes you, as she pulls away. How much you scared her. How terribly it could have ended.
And then she slips away. Just for a few moments, she says. To collect herself.
But.
The new day dawns and she has not returned.
And you rationalise she just needs some time. You almost ruined everything with a moment of recklessness. You have time in abundance and she is welcome to it.
When she doesn’t return that night, you square your shoulders and slip back between your sheets with acceptance. You can wait.
Five days pass. A week. Surely she’ll be back by ten?
She isn’t.
A month.
And now, a terrible growing suspicion that something is Wrong. That she should be back by now, would be back by now if she could.
And you have no way of knowing. Has she come across danger? Is she hurt, is she in need, is she lingering somewhere in pain?
For she is not Gone, you feel that in your soul. The loss of her presence would be a seismic, cataclysmic shift, so fundamental that you would feel it. And you don’t. So.
Mayhaps another month?
Which passes by with no sign of her, until you begin to make bargains with the universe. If you sign this Treaty, then surely she will be back by the Kingdom’s feast day. If you can enact peace in the neighbouring territories then you may wake to find her in your solar, an enigmatic smile and a story on her lips, and all of this will be explained away. Forgiven and forgotten.
A year.
Two.
Five.
Did you anger her, you wonder? You only Wished to love her more freely, with abandon, unthinking. A lovely thing, a beautiful thing, and might you still be happy even if the wish had left your lips and you had become the whisper on the summer breeze?
You know about the first ray of morning sun. The ache in her heart and everything it cost her. And unmeaningly, unthinkingly, you could have set her through that again.
If she is angry then she has a right to it.
But.
Ten years.
Your advisors plead with you to re-marry. Every feast an opportunity, an introduction. Still time to secure the succession.
You want none of it. You name an heir. A niece. Your sister believes you have bestowed a great honour, but you think the girl will not thank you for it in time. Not as she grows to understand the responsibility, the weight of it, the ever present press of duty.
Twenty years.
Some days you miss her so much you awake frantic with it, the longing and worry as sharp as if she slipped from your sheets only moments ago. Other days it settles as a dull ache, seeping into moments as unexpectedly as morning fog.
Thirty years.
If she returned now, would she recognise the face you see before you in the mirror? You imagine her unchanged, untouched by the slow march of time. Your reflection smiles, just for a moment.
Forty-three years, five months, seventeen days.
A gentle breeze in your chambers. Soft voices by your bedside. Gentle hands. The concern of the little Princess grown into a woman soon to be Queen.
And still.
How sweet it would be to look upon her face once more.
You wish. You wish.
You Wish.
