The death of the death of the King had seemed to take somewhat of a toll on the Kingdom of Athenia. Minas had been a beloved ruler, though Keikelius had never shared the sentiment. If he were honest, he was less concerned with Minas' death and more focused on the behavior of his wife. Circenia was a viper constantly waiting to strike, but Keikelius was quite sure that his wife had never expected her scathing last words to her brother to actually be her last.
They had spoken... little since the senate meeting and even less so in the hours since the King's death. But laying beside her, with just a few moments of silence and peace in the extremely late hours of the night, the man felt himself relaxing. The last few weeks of life in Athenia had been... somewhat of a hell. Keikelius still felt the gnawing guilt of harming Elias, though he kept it to himself. Worried for all of his children, he'd attempted to keep a bit of a leash on them, wanting to know where they went and what they did.
Keikelius silently watched his wife's back, the candle beside the bed still casting soft light into the shadows of the room. Frowning lightly to himself, he reached out one hand, gently smoothing it along her back and her spine, inching himself closer against her back so that he could wrap his arm firmly around her waist and nuzzle into the back of her neck.
"Are you awake?" Keikelius tested gently, stroking his wife's dark hair with rough, calloused fingers. He didn't exactly want to wake her, but he was tired of the silence. The simmering anger, whether it was from him or from her. He'd honestly lost track of who was angrier over the events of the last weeks. Despite his anger at everything, everyone... he wasn't the type of man to let his beloved ache in silence.
If that was actually what she was doing. As well as Keikelius knew Circenia she often surprised him. A majority of the time it was in the most wonderful of ways. Others? Others she was like an inferno and he was the water that tried to quell her, calm her. His beautiful, raging, wild wife. Keikelius had been long taken by her despite the nature of their engagement. He was soft, kind, only for her and their children.
He refrained from twitching at the memory of his fist connecting with Elias' gut and simply tested his wife's lucidity once more. The arm around her reached for her hand, twining his fingers with hers.
Ever since that day, that horrible, fateful day where she’d waited outside the Senate for what she thought was good news, Circenia could count on one hand the number of nights where she’d actually slept longer than an hour or two. And since her brother’s death… It was all she could do to keep her eyes closed longer than a few minutes before the nightmares began. When would it end?
Would it ever end?
Her lack of sleep, combined with every other… misfortune… her family had been through in the past few weeks made for an irritable Circenia. And an irritable Circenia… well… It was simple enough to say that the Stravos household was not a happy one. Something had to give, and it had to give soon. There were only so many more plates and mirrors they could afford to lose to the whirlwind of her temper.
The princess lay with her back to Keikelius, watching the shadows dance along the far wall. It was a common pastime of hers these days; sometimes, she could even hear the music they danced to her in head, a silent rhythm of light and dark that flickered and faded, keeping her anchored in the waking world.
A soft hand down her spine alerted her to her husband’s wakefulness, an arm slinking around her waist to pull her in closer. Feeling the nuzzle at the back of her neck and his fingers sifting through her hair, she closed her eyes and remained silent, feigning sleep so that he might leave her be. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to listen. She simply wanted to be alone with her grief, alone with her simmering rage against all the ways the world had wronged them.
For several long moments, she lay there without acknowledging him, her breath rising and falling in deep breaths as if she really was asleep. But when he refused to relent, pulling her more firmly into his grasp and entwining his hand with hers, Circenia felt herself sigh, unable to ignore him any longer. She knew her anger toward him was misplaced, that he had lost just as much as the rest of them. His vote for Persephone in the Senate… she knew he had no choice, that’d he’d done it only to save face.
But that didn’t make it any easier to forgive him.
“I’m awake,” she finally said, her voice whisper soft in the silence of their bedroom. Gently squeezing the hand that held hers, she turned onto her back so that she might look at him instead of the wall.
“I can’t rightly remember the last time I truly slept,” she confessed to her beloved, though she was sure he was well aware of her restlessness in the night. “Weeks, maybe. Night blends into day, days blend into weeks. Who can keep track of any of it anymore?”
Circenia was not a woman accustomed to wallowing in self-pity, but wallow she certainly had, and well did they both know it. Their wealth, their lands, their status… gone in an instant, their fame turned to notoriety with a few simple, backstabbing words. The spoiled princess was sure she felt that loss more keenly than the rest of her family.
Gazing up into the dark eyes that had always comforted her in the best and the worst of times, she did her best to keep the bleakness from her own. It was rare that she ever allowed herself to be vulnerable, much less to let another see it, but this man wasn’t just anyone. He was her rock, her shelter, her protection from the storm. And as much as she hated to admit it, she needed him now more than ever. She couldn’t go on suffering in silence.
He had known it. Circenia hadn't slept well for a number of days and he was well aware of that. If only because lack of sleep only aided in her miserable temperament. When surrounded on all sides by frustration, loss, and their faltering status within society, Keikelius knew she had found herself restless. The few slaves they had kept were frequently sweeping away broken pottery and looking glasses, which Keikelius then noted in ledgers relating to their monetary losses. He wasn't pulling his hair out yet, but he knew before long that even the straight laced business man would not be able to save them from total financial ruin.
If their sentencing lasted for very long, there would be no choice but for them to sell off anything that wasn't vital. The Lord Stravos understood that they needed to survive, first and foremost. If the five of them could weather the storm that rained down upon them, if Keikelius and the family could work together to earn back their title and lands… maybe all would find itself well again. Maybe their lives could be filled with lavish color and the shuffling feet of activity within their home.
Because right now, the sheer lack of movement, of business, of activity was driving the man insane. Not being able to hold a single conversation with his own wife? That was even more frustrating. Because she was his rock. The woman who kept him grounded when his temper was simmering, ready to boil over. And nothing good came of him losing his temper.
He thought of Elias again and curled more firmly against Circenia. He would make amends. Soon.
Right now, he needed to make amends with his life partner. Whose hair was like silk threading through his fingers. Whose skin smelled like vanilla and lavender from the oils they used in their baths. He listened to the rich velvet of her voice and finally breathed out, not realizing that he had been holding his breath in hope that she would speak to him. "I know," he murmured in a low rumble against the back of her neck. Then he shifted them, rolling her onto her back so that he could hover over her.
With his knees on either side of her hips and his hands braced beside her head, Keikelius gazed down into her face in the delicate darkness of their room. "We are going to discuss as a family what our next course of action is, Circenia," he said gently, stroking her cheek with a tentative touch. "Then we are going to get our titles and our lands back and try to put our lives back together, as close to normal as possible," he continued. He could be candid with her. She was his wife, after all. Keikelius always gave her complete honesty and trust. He had no doubt that she would never betray him. It was ostentatious and over the top, but he needed her laughter and her amusement in the moment. A small glimmer of normalcy between them where there had been none.
They were like fire and ice. They needed one another.
Leaning down, he brushed his lips against hers once, giving her a rare, warm smile. "Besides… I have a feeling I would end up dead if I didn't return my princess her crown." A teasing remark. One he hoped she would laugh at.
Circenia leaned into his touch in spite of herself, trying to take heart from his words. They were ones she desperately needed to hear, especially from his mouth. Almost thirty years of marriage and he’d always been there, always looked out for her, always cared for her… even when she made it nearly impossible to do so. The fiery princess was a whirlwind of emotion, an overindulged and spoiled woman who could go from coy and charming to spitting mean at a moment’s notice. But Keikelius had always seen her for who she was and loved her all the same, something for which she’d always been grateful. Without him at her side, she was sure she would have given in to despair already, but even with him there, she was coming dangerously close. Everything will be fine, was the constant mantra she repeated to herself day in and day out, but as the weeks went by and nothing changed, it was getting harder and harder to believe it. Looking up into her husband’s face and observing his calm assurance was almost enough to soothe her doubt. Almost.
She took Keikelius’s hand and laid a gentle kiss against his palm before holding it against her face. “I hope you’re right, I really do,” she murmured, stroking her thumb along the back of his knuckles. “I don’t even want to think about what will happen if you’re wrong.” Circenia was vain and self-centered, but she wasn’t stupid; she knew they couldn’t continue their normal lifestyle for much longer without dire consequences. And those consequences were not ones she was willing to face.
Her husband’s teasing remark finally broke through her melancholy, a smile flashing across her face in response to his own. Sweetly, Circenia returned his kiss, running her free hand through his close cropped locks. “Yes, indeed you would,” she teased back with a laugh, tugging him downward to kiss him again. The contact lingered for a few seconds longer than before, pulling back with a light nip to his bottom lip. “And I’d carry out the deed so flawlessly that no one would ever suspect me. The doting wife, forever in mourning, while everyone else is left to wonder whatever became of you…”
The hand in his hair trailed down his face to his chest, tenderly pausing right over his heart before gliding up to loop both arms around his neck. Pulling him in closer, she lightly nuzzled her nose against his with another laugh. “Best not to let that happen, though. For all our sakes.” Circenia grinned, playfully shuddering. ”Can you even imagine the state of Athenia if you weren’t here to hold me back? The kingdom would be in ashes in days, if not hours. Let’s not condemn everyone to such a fate, eh?”
Sometimes is amazed him at how easily he could subdue his wife. She had a temper that matched the worst of them, but it didn't often take much to calm Circenia. At least it didn't if Keikelius put forth the effort and played his cards right. His hand brushed her cheek when she pulled it against her skin and his dark eyes flitted slowly to her lips. She was speaking and he did the dutiful thing, listening instead of daydreaming about brushing his lips against hers to silence her. There had been enough talking in the last few days. Enough talking and yelling and flaring tempers. The tension had only become more pronounced with the death of the King.
Keikelius had stood to the side, his lack of title no longer dictating that he was allowed to walk in the procession. But he had watched his wife walk the path of the funeral along with various close friends of the King. He had stared almost bitterly at the newly minted Aimias of Argyris' back and then Takis of Argyris and his pretty little daughter until they were out of sight. He had waited for Circenia to round back before he took her arm in his and lead her silently home.
The tension had been palpable. But now, here, she was calm. Circenia was watching his face and touching him, something she would have avoided in the days before. Everything would be fine. He had to keep reminding himself of that as well. They would figure everything out together just as they always had. Because at the end of the day, they were in this entire situation together and they would come out of it together.
"I am always right," Keikelius noted with a warm chuckle, trailing his fingers right into her hair as he leaned closer to her. She smiled and somewhere in his chest, his heart lifted at the sight. The second kiss was as soft as the first, but he was already glancing down her body again, wondering what it would take to entice her gown off of her. For a man who was used to being coupled with his wife quite often the last weeks had been some sort of foreign torment that he wasn't inclined to continue. "Would you, now? I would think you might become the very first suspect," Keikelius teased Circenia lightly, his dark gaze narrowing at the nip at his lip. That was a sign in and of itself that she was willing to play.
A cheshire smile slowly trailed his lips and he nestled closer as her arms wound around his neck. He shifted his body weight settling between her legs. Tentatively, both hands trailed from ankles to her thighs, guiding her dress upward with a practiced care he was quite used to. A low, rumbling laugh escaped him and he kissed her again, this time with passion behind it. Keikelius leaned her harder back into her pillow, breaking the kiss only so that he could let his lips wander against her jaw and then her neck.
"I like when you talk fire and mayhem," he taunted Circenia with a chuckle, sucking lightly on the spot between her neck and her jaw. Not hard enough to leave a mark, but hard enough to get her attention. "Maybe I should just disappear for a week and let you strongarm everyone into serving you, princess…"
There was no one in the world who could subdue her like Keikelius could; not even her beloved brother had been able to do it with the quick efficiency that her husband did. It was a wonder how just a few brushes of his hand and soothing words in that calm, rumbling voice she so adored could quell the rage of her emotions and bring her from furious to amorous in a matter of minutes. Granted, it had been weeks since the initial outrage; had he tried the same tact at the beginning, Circenia would have been immune. But after so much time of being at odds, she was ready for the tension to break. They needed each other. They always had.
“Always right is a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?” she retorted with a laugh, watching with a smirk as his eyes wandered down her body. It wasn’t hard to figure out exactly where his mind had headed, her own only too eager to follow in the same direction. “Maybe half the time…”
Circenia raised a brow with her taunt, her smirk deepening. They both knew how much she loved to tease her husband, just as much as they both knew how much he loved it. There were few who would dare to speak to him so flippantly, but none knew him as she did. She doubted there was much of anything she could say to him that he wouldn’t forgive.
There was a catch in her breath when his fingers slowly began to divest her of her night gown, one hand even reaching down to assist him. One by one, the ties were undone and the garment was sliding from her body to pool on the floor. “The first suspect, maybe, but not the last one,” she murmured in a husky voice before his lips captured hers, a soft rumble of pleasure vibrating in the back of her throat. “Or do you really doubt me so much, dear husband?” Her question was more groan than word at that point, the play of his mouth against her throat making it increasingly hard for her to articulate much of anything. “If you’d like, I can prove it…”
It was a strange kind of foreplay between them, this exchange of taunts and barbs, but then again, they weren’t exactly what one might call a “normal” couple. On the surface, they seemed an odd pairing, with Keikelius’s demeanor as cold as the ice-capped mount of Olympus and Circenia’s as fiery as the forge of Hephaestus. But it hadn’t taken them long to discover just how well-suited they truly were, both cunning and ambitious in their own respective ways. Even all these years later, their spark still blazed just as brightly as it always had, and tonight, with their volley of playful threats and teasing jests, it burned as fiercely as ever.
His next suggestion had her laughing all over again, tangling her fingers in his hair as his mouth sucked at the tender flesh of her neck. “Good luck getting them all back from me when you return, then,” she replied in a husky voice, her free hand busily working to rid him of his own nightclothes. “I should think that you of all people would know what’s mine is mine,” she accentuated this assertion with another kiss, pulling his face back to hers and lightly teasing her tongue between his lips. Her mouth brushed against his as she added in a low voice, “And will always remain that way.”
Long nails roamed down the skin she exposed, leaving quickly fading lines in their wake. Feather-light, her lips and tongue traced a trail along his jaw to his ear, pulling the lobe between her teeth. Her murmur was hardly more than a warm breath in his ear when she asked, “But do you really think you could stand to leave me for a week, anyhow?”
Yes, she was willing to play. Yes, her husband did find himself absolutely delighted at the prospect. Watching her gown slip off her and onto the floor was an entirely distracting moment as Keikelius then found himself gazing slowly along her body. The body that had given him three beautiful children and millions of moments of pleasure and contentment over the years. It was hard not to be completely enamoured with how she looked underneath him.
A lesser man would say that was where she beloged. Beneath him. But that wasn't Keikelius' style. In his mind, the women in his life were the smartest individuals he knew. Even when pitted against himself, Keikelius was very aware that his daughters and his wife would often, if not always, come out on top. Which was exactly where Keikelius wanted them to be. Above everyone else. With more power and respect than anyone else.
Keikelius valued the power that Circenia brought to their relationship and the court. Years ago, suitors had been lining up for the chance to offer their hand in marriage, but it was Keikelius who cameout on top. A family with little name to speak of had become royalty in the span of only a ceremony. It always made Keikelius smile when he thought about it.
"I rather enjoy my head attached to my body, dear Circenia," Keikelius quipped back at his wife, seeming to debate what to do with his hands first. His fingertips grazed her arms then her shoulders, along her collarbone, down along the valley of her breasts... only for him to trail feather-light touch down along her abdomen. Her fingers worked his night clothes off and he tossed his aside as well, smirking to himself as he considered the beautiful woman under him. "Though I do appreciate the offer," the man purred, catching her lips again, his tongue brushing hers lightly.
"Such a greedy lady of the court," Keikelius reprimanded gently, groaning slightly, his breath hissing through his teeth at the feeling of nails against his skin. The effect was dizzying and Keikelius found that he needed a reminder to pace himself. He could not move too fast or he could spoil the fun for the both of them. But move too slow? She would grow frustrated an impatient with him. He knew. Any time he went the slightest bit too slow for her mood, he heard about it.
Regarding her silently, his eyes closing when she nipped at his ear lobe. About this moment, he chuckled at her words, glancing down to watch how he let his fingers wander lower. Lower and lower until they dipped between her legs, circling the tiny bundle of nerves there. Turning his head, Keikelius caught her in a sharp kiss, putting more of his weight into it to make sure that his wife had to lean back. To make sure that she would yield so that he could slip two fingers into her core. Which he did until he was able to rest his palm against her body.
Breaking the kiss, he almost grinned, refusing to give her the satisfaction of him moving his hand just yet. "I think its the other way around," he pointed out, "Do you think you could stand to leave me for a week, princess?" he purred down at her.
Shivers followed in the wake of his fingers, gooseflesh raising along the skin he touched. Luckily for her husband, Circenia was in no rush, all too willing to indulge in the nocturnal activities she'd been deprived of for too many nights. She needed this as much as he did, and she intended to luxuriate in every last second of his attentions.
That kiss had her gasping, his body pressing hers to the bed with a demand that she was helpless to refuse. Not that she wanted to. Circenia was hardly a submissive woman by any means, but she was happy to let Keikelius take control in their bedchamber, at least for a time. Should he keep teasing her, however... he might soon lose the privilege.
"So cruel to me," her groan bordered on a whimper, his fingers sheathed but unmoving in the velvety depths of her center. Her back arched, hips moving in subtle encouragement of further attention while he remained steadfastly still above her.
Her breath hissed between her teeth, doing her best not to writhe beneath him. "We both know I'd go mad in just two days without you," she murmured in response to his taunt. "Even if you try to act like you wouldn't do the same."
Though her lips complained, her eyes did the opposite, smoldering up at the man hovering over her. How was it that he could tantalize her so easily, make her succumb with hardly more than a few purrs and strokes of her skin? He knew her too well, her handsome lord, her ruthless lover. Even after so many nights together, so many sleepless evenings beneath the sheets, he could still stir her with hardly more than a single gesture. It was maddening, it was infuriating, but most of all... it was pure bliss. She'd have it no other way.
"Don't make me beg," she warned with a cock of her brow and a mischievous glint in her crystalline eye. "You know I won't."