It had been mere days since the debacle in the Senate, and Circenia hadn’t been able to bring herself to even look at her son, much less speak with him. In fact, she’d hardly spoken at all, tight-lipped with anger everywhere she went. Everything they had, everything they were… their wealth, their lands, their very nobility… stripped from them in seconds, all over her son’s idiotic mistake.
She wanted desperately to believe it wasn’t true, that the accusations levelled against him were nothing more than the jealous lies of a selfish girl. However, even with a mother’s doting blindness, she knew in her heart of hearts that he was just as guilty as they accused him of being. Elias was an ambitious man, who, like his parents, would stop at nothing to get his way. The princess wasn’t even angry about what he’d done, not really. There were always casualties when it came to this sort of thing.
No, she was angry because he hadn’t told her first.
Circenia was a cunning woman. She always had been, even as a child. Her entire life had been spent learning how to bend others to her will. Had he consulted her, told her what he planned to do, she could have advised him on the proper course of action. Such as… not sending a damn letter. How could he be so utterly stupid as to put any of his plan on paper? Hadn’t she taught him better than that? No one, absolutely no one was to be trusted, not ever! The world was full of liars and power-hungry fools… the only way to defeat them was to be better at it. A lesson her son had obviously failed to learn.
Had there been no physical evidence of what he’d done, they could have talked or even bought their way out of it. After all, what was some pirate’s word against the word of a Stravos? With nothing to back up his claims, they could have discredited him entirely. But to put evidence in his gods-be-damned hands?! Circenia couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so furious. If ever.
Rising from her bed in the very early hours of the morning after yet another sleepless night, she glanced over to make sure her husband was still asleep. Keikelius seemed to be out of it, so Circenia stayed quiet, hastily wrapping herself in the nearest article of clothing she could find. Creeping carefully across the floor, she let herself out of the room. Enough was enough. She had to confront Elias and learn the truth of it herself.
It wasn’t a very long walk before she arrived at her son’s door, stopping and taking a deep breath. Don’t let yourself lose it. Remember, above all, he is your son. Closing her eyes for a brief moment, she straightened up and let herself inside, closing the door behind her.
“Elias, wake up,” Circenia called into the scant light of the bedchamber, though she couldn’t imagine Elias was sleeping any better than she had. “It’s time we had a talk.”
One might have thought that, after being sentenced to such a tedious punishment in his house arrest, Elias would have wanted to spend as little time in the archontiko as possible, but the opposite had somehow become very much the case. He might have allowed his mind to become fixated on thoughts of how he would achieve his ultimate fantasy, and this may have included spending increasing quantities of time within the royal palace as opposed to the Stravos manor, yet he often found himself returning to the remodelled concert hall.
It was odd. Elias had often considered his family to be no more important than any other individual in his life, the only difference being that they were ever-present and had shaped him more than he cared to admit, but such apathy towards them did not mean he wished to be completely isolated from his parents nor sisters. There was a part of him which had begun to consider that, perhaps, he should start to trust them further than he had in the past years. It may well have been the reason for his sudden reliance on these therapeutic home visits.
On this night, in particular, he had chosen to lay his head to rest at the Stravos home, although 'rest' might have been a strong term for the sleepless evening. Elias had never really unconsciously dreamed, his nights more often than not filled with dark and empty sleep than they were torrid hallucinations, but in recent days, he had found that closing his eyes led to visions more vivid than he had ever before experienced. It was always that same image of that one horrendous senate meeting, where everything had fallen apart. The thought was so endless and so discomforting that Elias now found it almost impossible to sleep at all, let alone for the full stretch of the moon's journey across the sky.
When Mother had slid into his chambers in the earliest hours of the morning, he had already been awake. The man had always been an early riser, and this day was no exception, but could one really call it rising when he had barely slept? He had dragged himself across the room to take a seat at the desk now riddled with half-discarded parchments, the man neglecting to light any candle, his eyes left squinting in the pale moonlight.
"Mother," he had greeted her, rising from the klismos and turning to face the woman, the moon's silver beams cast over his face and only accentuating that maddened glint that lingered in the depths of his verdant irises. Her tone implied this was far from a friendly discussion, and he naturally switched his persona to that more concerned tone that she would likely recognise. "I imagine you wish to discuss what has occurred. I had imagined we might have a less nocturnal conversation, but I suppose it must have been keeping you from rest as it has myself, judging by the hour. Please. Have a seat."
The formality of his tone grated on Circenia’s ears, pausing near the doorway as she looked over to where her son stood. Her beautiful boy, clothed in the gentle light of Artemis that only just concealed the hint of madness in his eyes. Her ambitious boy, always so cunning and clever, who had the world at his fingertips. Her foolish boy, who, in one fell swoop, had ruined it all. Where had she gone wrong?
Had she gone wrong?
Slowly, without saying a word, Circenia approached, her shrewd gaze taking in Elias from head to toe. He hadn’t slept either, eh? No surprise. How could he, knowing what he’d done? The future of their family, everything that accompanied the Stravos name had rested on his shoulders. They’d put all their faith in him, all their effort, all their praise. And now everything was gone. Because of him.
The princess could feel her fury languidly simmering beneath the surface, though she kept it carefully in check. Circenia was a tempestuous woman with an unpredictable temper, it was true, but she’d always done her utmost to be a good mother. No one could deny that. She had always loved her children, nurtured them as best she could, even if she had indulged them perhaps a little too much. Even Elias. Well… especially Elias.
It was an undisputed fact in the Stravos household that her son had always been her favorite child, for in him, she’d always seen the bright, glorious future their line was bound for. Even as he’d grown older and more arrogant, distancing himself from the rest of the family, her adoration of him had never diminished, the doting mother consciously aware of his faults, but forever dismissing them. In her eyes, Elias could do no wrong—the sun shone practically at his command.
Until now. Which only made all of this that much harder.
Circenia finally came to a halt in front of him and remained silent for a few minutes longer, her face expressionless but for a slow, arrhythmic twitch in her jaw. Crystal blue eyes caught his gaze and held it, unblinking for an almost unnatural length of time. After what seemed an eternity, she finally took the seat he’d offered, though her gaze never broke away from his. A quiet Circenia was almost as unnerving as a raging one. If not even more so.
“Is it true?” Her simply put question finally broke the tense silence, settling clenched hands in her lap. “Did you do it?”
There was a tension in the air that dulled it enough that it almost appeared too thick to breathe. It was evident not only in the overly stiff tone that Elias had used when speaking but in the way his mother seemed so hesitant as she crossed the chamber to take the chair he had offered her. Times had changed, and although they had once been closer, and, although he could still sense that underlying love in his birthgiver, he could not deny that, at that moment, the pair of them felt worlds apart.
Although usually so proud of all his accomplishments that he would willingly announce them to the world in the hopes that the heavens would rain down upon him with praise and promise, her question left him without words. It was illogical, really, for he had known it was coming from the first moments she had entered his bedroom, even referenced it himself in his greeting of the woman, but the reality of the words had hit him harder than expected. There was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind that he did not feel too often. Guilt. That horrid, pining call which demanded his attention and refused his ignorance. Yet it did not seem a remorse for his actions, and more so one directed entirely at the dark-haired woman who now sat facing him. He had upset Mother.
Elias held her gaze for as long as he was able, his hazel eyes fixed as fiercely as he could manage on her own cerulean orbs until he could no more, and he broke away in frustration, searching for anything else to look at, and settling on a distant corner of the ceiling. For a man so generally filled to the brim with confidence, he seemed a pathetic child, and there were very few he would allow to see him in such a worthless state. But he had not slept, and his defences were not what they usually were. Elias could not manage his typical degree of cold-hearted apathy, nor his dark-minded wit, and for one rare moment, he had become only a boy fearful of being punished by his mother.
Eventually, he answered the question, his body falling back into place in its original seat, and his gaze flickering slowly back towards Mother, though he still struggled to look her thoroughly in the eye. "I did," he replied, quite frankly, unable to muster any further response than the outright truth. His previous formality was gone, and his slumped body was wrought with defeat. "I made a mistake, Mother."
Circenia had come to this room prepared with her righteous indignation, her justified anger at everything that had transpired. She had expected her son to get defensive, to deny it, to pass the blame onto someone else… anything but what he did. A simple admission of guilt. Admitting he was wrong. When was the last time her proud son had ever said he made a mistake?
Perhaps he was growing up, after all.
It caught her off guard, to say the least, the princess blinking rapidly in the wake of his admission. For a moment, she was simply speechless, her rage slowly deflating without a fight to stoke it. “Yes. You did,” was her brilliant substitute for the scathing speech she’d tucked away for this conversation, at a loss for words for once in her life.
Some of the tension in her body relaxed as she regarded Elias, falling quiet for another few long moments as Circenia regrouped and reconsidered what she’d come to say. “You made a mistake,” she slowly echoed his words as calculating blue eyes surveyed her son’s face, a face more open and earnest than she’d seen it in a long time. There was remorse there, genuine contrition, and frankly, it amazed her. Was it all just an act? Or was there something really there?
“But you’re going to fix it.”
It was another long moment of consideration while the princess pondered, the blackness of late night slowly fading into the awakening light of early morning. Taking a deep breath, she added, “And I’m going to help you.”
Rising from her seat, Circenia closed the distance between her and her son, stopping in front of him and laying a hand on his shoulder. She would wait for him to look up at her before she continued, “Yes, you made a mistake, but only in the execution. You are what your father and I made you. An ambitious man with a lust for power that can overcome reason. And even though it cost us quite literally everything…” Her fingers squeezed painfully tight on his shoulder, a bit of her previous anger creeping back into her voice before she slowly relaxed, “I can’t fault you for being exactly what we taught you to be.”
Equally surprising as Elias’s declaration of his own guilt was Circenia’s admission that she had a part to play in it. It was a morning of firsts, it would seem, but given their position, it seemed only appropriate. Things had to change if they ever wanted to be on top again, and change had to start with them. The House of Stravos was not the kind of House to take a defeat lightly. They would come back, and they would come back stronger than they ever were before.
But only united could they make the dream a reality.
“So tell me, Elias. Talk to me. Where do you want to go from here?”