The wine arrived on his tongue before he was ready for it.
That was the trick of a truly good vintage, Alessio thought, it never announced itself the way lesser wine did, all sharp corners and obvious sweetness up front.
This one opened soft, almost hesitant, a pale honeyed warmth that spread slow across his tongue before the second layer came in underneath it, something drier and more mineral, like sun-warmed stone after rain.
There was a trace of stone fruit buried somewhere in the middle of it, apricot maybe, or something close enough to it that his memory reached for the word without quite landing on it, and beneath that, right at the very end, a long, clean finish that left the back of his throat tasting faintly of honey and something green, crushed herbs, or the memory of them.
It did not linger the way cheap wine lingered, cloying and desperate to be noticed. It simply left, gracefully, the way a good guest left a party before anyone had grown tired of them.
’No wonder he keeps this bottle waiting for me specifically,’ Alessio thought.
’The man remembers exactly which vices are worth indulging an old friend.’
He let the silence sit for a while after that, the two of them simply drinking, the gold afternoon light shifting slowly across the marble floor as the sun outside continued its patient crawl toward evening.
There was a particular kind of peace in it, the kind that only existed between two people who had known each other long enough that filling every quiet moment with words had stopped being necessary decades ago.
Alessio turned his head first.
"So," he said, his voice carrying a note of something softer now, something that had nothing to do with decrees or borders.
"How has the condition of Nyxravene been? I haven’t heard word of her in a while."
A sad look crossed Cassian’s face immediately, quick and unguarded in a way that little else about the man ever was.
He took another sip of his wine, longer this time, and turned his head toward the open window, toward the sun sitting low and gold above the palace spires.
"She’s been recovering well," he said.
"Her condition is improving,"
"I think, given enough time, she’ll recover fully."
"That’s good to hear," Alessio said.
Cassian was quiet for a moment, still looking out at the light rather than at him.
"But I still haven’t found a cure for my daughter," he said finally.
"I’ve tried nearly everything within my reach,"
"Physicians from every corner of the empire,"
"Scholars who’ve spent their entire lives studying afflictions no one else has bothered naming,"
"None of it has worked."
His jaw tightened slightly, an old frustration surfacing that clearly hadn’t dulled with age, only settled into something quieter and more permanent.
"I still don’t understand how it happened!"
"I was with Nyxravene every single moment before Nyx’s birth,"
"Every single one, and then during the birth itself it simply happened,"
"I don’t know what I missed,"
"I’ve gone over that day more times than I can count, and I still can’t find the moment where it went wrong."
"Is she growing up well otherwise?" Alessio asked, gently.
"Are there other complications beyond it?"
"She’s doing fine, honestly." Cassian paused, his fingers turning the stem of his glass slowly between them.
"It’s just that..."
He stopped again, and Alessio waited, the way he always had for this man, patient enough to let the silence do whatever work it needed to do before the words caught up to it.
"That damned curse still affects everyone around her," Cassian said at last.
"I have enough vitality of my own to shrug off most of what it does to me,"
"But she can’t interact properly with children her own age,"
"Not without the effect reaching them too."
He set the glass down, his hand lingering against it a moment longer than necessary.
"But she inherited her mother’s spirit, at least,"
"She doesn’t let it drag her down the way it easily could have,"
"She doesn’t brood over it, doesn’t sit in some corner feeling sorry for herself the way most children in her position might have, and honestly, no one would have blamed her if she had, she just keeps moving forward anyway."
He picked the glass back up and drank the rest of it in a single motion, the last of the wine disappearing in one unhurried swallow.
"Haah." He exhaled, long and low, something proud settling into the sound despite everything underneath it.
"I am proud of her, no matter what the rest of the world decides to call her, for something she was born with and never chose."
"I’m glad to hear she’s doing well," Alessio said, and there was real relief threading through his voice now, the kind that came from genuinely caring about the answer rather than simply asking out of courtesy.
Cassian nodded once, some of the weight easing off his shoulders now that the words were finally out, and reached for the bottle to pour himself another glass.
The conversation drifted after that, the way conversations between old friends tended to, away from curses and decrees and into smaller things, old campaigns neither of them had thought about in years, a mutual acquaintance who’d apparently taken up beekeeping of all things, the absurd cost of importing spice from the southern trade routes this season.
The gold light kept sliding slowly across the floor, and somewhere in the middle of all of it, the weight that had walked in through those double doors with Alessio finally, quietly, set itself down.
***
The Emperor’s decision reached the wider empire within the week.
Cassian Von Vectorian, Emperor of the human territories, formally announced that he had granted his permission to King Alessio Von Winterfang’s lockdown decree, the borders of Winterfang to remain sealed for the foreseeable future, backed now by the full weight of the imperial throne rather than standing alone on one kingdom’s authority.
Every court that had been waiting, quietly, patiently, for the Emperor’s word before making any real move of their own, found themselves left with nothing to work with.
No official channel to press through.
No crack in the imperial position wide enough to slip a demand into.
What little intelligence trickled out of Winterfang from this point on came in fragments, secondhand rumors, half-confirmed whispers passed between merchants and travelers, nothing solid enough for anyone to build a real strategy around.
The envoys who had gathered at Winterfang’s border, representatives from three racial empires and half a dozen kingdoms besides all tried, briefly, to press the matter through threats of their own, veiled warnings about strained relations and withdrawn trade agreements.
Cassian’s response when it finally came was brief and unbending enough that even the most persistent among them understood there was no further ground to be gained by pushing.
The matter sank back beneath the surface, the way important things sometimes did, not resolved so much as postponed, tucked away into the quiet places where courts kept the questions they hadn’t given up on asking.
But the pieces did not stop moving simply because no one could see them anymore.
They rarely did.
And so the years that followed passed the way years tended to, quietly, one after another, the world reshaping itself in small increments no single person ever noticed happening in real time, until one day they looked up and realized how far everything had already traveled without them.
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End of Chapter 92: A Daughter’s Curse
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[ End of Volume 2 : Training Arc : Mission Baby Fat Reduction ]