It had only been an hour or two afterwards when the pair of them decided that the only way to get rid of the dark cloud hanging over them was to get completely wasted. Cressia, in her earthy elven wisdom, explained to Alvin that it was normal for elves to get drunk after going through heavy grieving together.

  “That doesn’t necessarily apply since we’re in Zantzar, though,” Alvin said, trying to weasel his way out of this strange custom.

  “Err, no, but we’re going to get drunk together anyhow,” she replied, lifting him up before grabbing two shot glasses and a bottle of rum that had been stashed behind tomorrow’s bake sale preparations.

  Cressia cautioned that this was Zantzar Navy Rum—incredibly strong and wicked stuff—something she’d come into possession of after winning it in a plethora of card games while still serving in the Zantzar Armed Forces.

  As he watched her pour the glasses, the shame he felt from being comforted like a child earlier only seemed to intensify. Even now, over something as simple as pouring a drink, she was still helping him. He started to reach, but Cressia gently pushed his hand away. Her antennae had prickled; she sensed he wanted some control over his life now. But she made no comment. She wanted to comfort him, not with words—of which many had been spilled freely around him all his life—but with actions.

  If she did otherwise, she knew—just as it had been in her own life—he’d take another few steps back into the darkness, where he’d gloom, and sulk, and find it hard to escape again.

  “Xenodon,” Cressia whispered as they clinked glasses. This would be as much a linguistic lesson for him as it was a cultural one. She downed hers first, and so quickly did the rum take hold that Alvin had to catch her as she collapsed into a fit of sublime, giggling hysterics.

  It was only then, in a strange metaphorical way—while Cressia’s formidable brain was only half working—that Alvin allowed the glass to shatter: He was a teetotaller.

  Had the revelation come earlier, Cressia might have been more sly around him. But now, she paid no attention to the social norms that would’ve usually been in place and began badgering him with questions and answers and questions that had no answers.

  “You haven’t had alcohol before?!”

  “Why haven’t you gotten drunk?!”

  “It must be all those years spent putting jewellery together!”

  “DRINK DRINK DRINK!”

  Her speech and tone grew more nonsensical and gibberish as she went on, and Alvin wondered if she’d even remember anything about this night once dawn broke. Would she remember him turning into a crying ball of emotion, then suddenly clamming up—only for her to break through his walls when she gripped and hugged him?

  He decided he’d test her, to see if she still remembered that lesser king who’d crawled and scampered his way into her run-down home.

  “No, you’re not lesser,” Cressia slurred out. “You’re Alvin!”

  “King Alvin,” he corrected her, trying to remain regal.

  “King Alvin!” she giggled, flapping her arms like the wild ostrich he’d ridden into the boroughs, “the king of Zan—oops, sorry—I mean ostriches!”

  He’d been in many strange situations in his life already, but his fencing tutor mimicking the national bird of Zantzar while intoxicated was definitely a first.

  Then again, you are intoxicating to be around, Cressia, Alvin thought.

  He could feel his lips creasing into a smile once again. If this was how the mighty Cressia Caravania acted after only one shot of rum, then he was all but certain he’d spontaneously combust.

  “Did you misssssssssss meeeeeeeeeeeee?” Though the words were a mess, Alvin still felt it was Cressia’s attempt at curtsying. Her long lashes blinked as she looked at him, and his heart skipped a beat or two.

  “Yes, I missed you, Cressia.”

  “Good! I’m sorry—I missed you too!”

  “You already said something like that earlier.”

  “Yes! But I wanted to say it again!”

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  She might spend the rest of her life repeating it while they were together as a team, and Alvin wondered how long this team of theirs was really going to last. After the orcs were defeated, he wouldn’t have any real use for her among the royal court. He could take up recreational fencing as a hobby and not as a call to arms, but from all the vignettes and tales she’d told him, Cressia didn’t seem like someone who’d be happy to stay in one place for long.

  Bless her heart and long elven ears, but unless he tethered her to the palace, she’d probably head off to another place and find a new prince to train for a season or two. Yet the thought of Cressia not being part of his life anymore gnawed at him more deeply than any nightmare of orcs overwhelming and conquering Zantzar.

  He shook out the dark thoughts ruminating in his mind. He’d given everything to the present—but had never asked what she wanted from the future.

  “Cressia?” Alvin whispered, but already felt her body stiffen like a leg of rotten venison. She was asleep, already cooing, her head resting against his left shoulder.

  Aeryn had done similar things when the Zantzar royal family had traveled for hours by carriage across Mylea to attend one royal function or another. Even then, the ballroom politics tired him out, and his only use came afterwards—when Aeryn wanted a shoulder to lean on during the long ride home through the dead of night.

  With Cressia, there would be plenty of awkward questions in the morning, but Alvin felt it was pointless to worry about such things when he could simply enjoy embracing a friend like this, as she had done for him. Perhaps, if he were fortunate, she would forget about the weak, pitiful king who cried into her bosom earlier on.

  He felt tired. So very tired of upholding an image. He wanted to run from it all, and if Cressia didn’t want to stay in Zantzar, he would gently ask if he could come with her. First for a few months. But then—gradually, wordlessly—he would ask to stay at her side permanently.

  He began brushing his fingers through the roots of her blonde hair when he, too, began to slump, going as stiff as a leg of hardened venison. The sexual undertones of such a description were not at all lost on him either, as his eyes shuttered, drifting off to the rhythm of Cressia’s soft breathing beside him.

  Cressia found herself wrapped in Alvin’s arm later that morning, which caused the ostrich to chirp up when it saw one cradling the other through the small corner window.

  Cressia blushed, but was thankful that it was not the borough children peering in, who didn’t need another ship tease to add to their Cressia × Alvin collection.

  Ship tease. She’d picked the term up once when meeting with other fans in Pendaline for the 10th anniversary of an explicit romantic novella she’d once read. Cressia, still fresh from leaving the Zantzar military life, had thought they were speaking about an approaching fleet that could only be seen from the corners of their eyes.

  No, they’d giggled at the strange elf girl who’d been sheltered from a lifetime of fanzines and fan art across the border. A ship tease was when two characters were beginning to fall for each other, but hadn’t gone the whole way yet. A brush of the hand, eyes that drifted too long—these were all the ingredients of a good ship tease that left an audience hungry for more.

  Cressia found herself tracing her fingertips over Alvin’s lean stomach as she thought over it. He was nothing like she’d imagined royalty to be when she lived across in the Conclave, where caricatures of royalty seemed to be omnipresent. Hideous caricatures, with thin eyebrows and large slanted noses inherited from decades of inbreeding. Not that there wasn’t some degree of inbreeding among regal lines, but Alvin didn’t seem to be a product of that at all.

  He was handsome, yes, but nothing so special that would make a woman (or man!) crane her neck to the side if they passed each other on a busy market day. Cressia had not been taken in at first, but slowly—as it was for every man she’d crushed on—she gradually found him more attractive in a platonic way.

  She wondered if there had been a Zantzar somewhere down the line so besotted with his ostrich that he decided to marry her and make her his Queen while he was at it. She liked that image. In fact, Alvin might turn to that ostrich as a backup plan if she turned away his hand in marriage.

  Queen Cressia Zantzar of the Zantzar Kingdom. No, definitely not.

  Queen Cressia Caravania of the Zantzar kingdom. Close, but not quite for her yet.

  Queen Cressia Caravania-Zantzar of the Zantzar kingdom. Far too wordy, but that was what would be expected of her if she wanted to keep her surname.

  Alvin suppressed a snore from coming out. By the Goddesses, he was still trying hard not to offend her while asleep. Very courtly of him, the Zantzar King—considering his mind was lost in some other dreamlike place right now.

  She wondered what he was dreaming of, and felt deep in her bones that it might be her. During her travels, she’d heard that some mages were capable of peering into the dreams of others—but only after a lifetime of study, and only when old age had finally crept upon them and there was no one left in the whole world who thought of them outside of work or academia.

  Such a terrible fate made her think back on how it was better to stand up to live, than to sit down and write. Of course, she’d never been a strong academic, but the quote resonated with her all the same when she saw it carved on a wooden bunker while in the Armed Forces. She’d lived so long on her own that now, in her mid-20s, she wondered if she should spend the rest of her time alongside someone else too.

  Then his eyes opened—a groggy, bloodshot mess—and Cressia felt that all was right in the world, lying next in a heap to the Zantzar King on her small cottage floor.

  “Good morning.”

  She blushed. It was the first time that he’d made her blush.

  “Good morning, King Alvin.”

  “You were a laugh riot last night, you know.”

  She reddened, and imagined she’d said some strange things to him under the influence of Zantzar rum. It was a red brand of rum, after all.

  “So, what do we have planned for today?” Alvin yawned. “I’d imagine it’s more fencing, isn’t it?”

  Cressia shook her head. No, not fencing, she thought, I have something better planned.