Emperor Covifaht issuing a hasty summons to discuss ill news was never a welcome development. This particular bad news was already known to all of the city of Methrangia by the time Queen Evinda and King Rohmhelt walked up to the doors of Emperor Covifaht’s private chamber. She glanced at Rohmhelt, whose eyes stayed pointed at the mosaic tiles before him. They could both hear Covifaht’s shouts bashing against the walls and doors. Evinda wondered if he possessed a heretofore unseen otherworldly power, at least for bellowing.

“Chin up,” she prodded Rohmhelt once they reached the white-enameled doors. “Be a rock.”

“Rocks don’t have to say anything,” he grumbled.

“Which means they can’t whine,” she scolded him, prompting the King to roll his eyes.

Indecipherable shouts thudded against the doors while they waited outside. Deep and powerful, there was no sign of Covifaht losing any of his legendary energies.

“He’ll be so damn furious,” Rohmhelt lamented.

“Not at you,” Evinda reminded him. “This is your brother’s doing and his alone. Your father likely only needs to air his grievances and then he’ll be recovered.”

“I don’t think he’ll stop.”

“Then we’ll bring in wine,” she laughed, which drew a concerned glance from her king. “Or something stronger?”

At that, he finally laughed, albeit awkwardly. Humor is the only damn thing that will see you through all of this, she mused as she observed her husband. She moved to open the doors, but before she could the doors flew open with Court Minister Bolgrelt and several of the Emperor’s other ministers ran out of the chamber, visibly shaken. Covifaht stood at the chamber’s rear, gesturing wildly.

"If your brother was here right now, you'd be an only child before you could blink!" Covifaht screamed before they had moved past the door. "I'd rip off his head, drink his blood, and spit it back in his eyes!"

Both Evinda and Rohmhelt looked at one another in amazement. She saw that her husband didn't have the stomach to listen to his father's rants, but she silently shamed him with a condescending stare to prod him on to walk into the room. Even so, when he reached his father, he stood sheepishly, not uttering even the slightest sound.

"Well?" Covifaht continued. "Is that too much?"

"Maybe a touch," Evinda laughed to try to lighten the mood.

"Eh, and you, what do you think I should do to your brother?" Covifaht smirked as he rushed over to Rohmhelt. His eyes flicked wildly from one target to the next. Rohmhelt had told her that the Emperor could be like this, but she hadn't believed it. At least until that point.

"I think this is very delicate, father. I..."

"Fah! Delicate?! Were he not family this would be treason! I’d be in my rights to string his parts up from each spire of the citadel!"

What he said was certainly true, at least in Evinda’s mind. The order had been clear and the defiance of that order had been equally clear. She knew that her king fretted about the possibility of his visions coming true, but almost all, including the angels themselves dismissed the possibility. Simel was an exception, but one Rohmhelt and his close advisers had felt increasingly comfortable marginalizing.

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“I understand your position, father,” Rohmhelt laughed awkwardly. “But, I…”

Before Evinda could finish rolling her eyes into the back of her head at her husband’s resurgent cowardice, his own father cackled in his face.

“Have a damn sense of humor! I swear on your mother’s grave that I don’t know when you got so boring!” Covifaht exclaimed, throwing his hands skyward. “I’m not going to kill your brother… maybe beat the shit out of him, but that’s about it.”

“Father, I…”

“Oh stop it! Now, let’s be serious, shall we?” Covifaht said, grabbing Rohmhelt by his shoulders and shaking him like a doll. “I need you to bring your armies here. I’m going to raise my banners. The two of us should have, oh, a million and a half men? Easily? That should be enough to scare your brother out of this stupidity.”

Rohmhelt fumbled to respond. His queen decided to rescue her husband in his hour of need.

“That would be an expensive undertaking, especially just before the harvest,” she said, bowing graciously at Covifaht, who smiled warmly. “If this isn’t war, there might be some hard feelings that we disrupted their farms.”

She felt she had to mention the issue because neither Covifaht nor Rohmhelt would have had the sense to think of it.

“Oh, that’s a fair point, my dear,” Covifaht said, running his hand over his beard. “They’ll figure it out. The weather’s good! Our farmers have dealt with worse. Besides, there’s nothing more important.”

Evinda turned to Rohmhelt and they both mutually shrugged. There was certainly no denying that nothing in their lifetimes, or the lifetimes of any of their ancestors, rivaled the magnitude of what now faced them.

“You’re right of course, father.” Rohmhelt conceded. “I’ll send the orders to my marshals at once.”

The Emperor smiled from ear to ear and slammed his hands down on his son’s shoulders again.

“Now! Lunch! I think it’s fish today. Will that be fine, my dear?” he asked, bowing toward Evinda.

“More than fine,” she warmly replied and Rohmhelt grimaced.

Food, it seemed, was one of the few things in the world that could blunt Covifaht’s anger. He slurped down his fish seemingly whole as a great serpent would have. Once he had finished, Evinda noted that his prior rage subsided. Was he just hungry? Is that all it was?

Evidently that was the case as the Emperor calmly discussed the entire situation walking with them in the citadel’s courtyard on their way to the carriage. If she had simply closed her eyes and listened to his voice, she would have had a hard time believing he was the same man. It was charming in a certain sense. Such behavior reminded her of her daughters. Of course, they were adolescents and not the Emperor of nigh one hundred million souls.

Just as they prepared to board the carriage, Covifaht put one hand on each of their shoulders and pulled them close.

“We’re going to get past all of this easily enough. I don’t think Duronaht has it in him to keep up this silliness for long,” the Emperor said confidently. “Once he yields, he’ll of course be disinherited and I’ll send him off somewhere. You, and you alone, will be the clear heir. I always knew it was going to be this way. Always. I hope you never doubted it.”

“I… I’m not sure what I thought,” Rohmhelt laughed, the wind blowing his hair downward over his eyes.

“Well, whatever you thought, know that you will be emperor, and your son after you and so on. That’s been decided now. That’s our future,” Covifaht declared, hugging Rohmhelt tightly.

“I’ll do as you intend, father,” Rohmhelt said, squeaking out his breath while his father pressed his lungs. Evinda laughed at the spectacle.

“And you,” Covifaht said, discarding Rohmhelt and moving toward Evinda, “you’re going to have to look after him. At this point he’s all I’ve got. I’m trusting you!”

“Of course,” she smiled.

He’s adorable in a certain sense. What an odd thing out of an Emperor of Methrangia.

With that, they set off on a hurried ride back to Rohmhelt’s lands. They mostly rode in silence, not as much because of any stresses, but because of their sheer fatigue after those tumultuous days. It was some hours before both were reliably awake to speak to one another.

“Thank you,” Rohmhelt said weakly, reaching his hand out to her.

She grasped it, noting that it ran cold and covered in a layer of sweat.

“For what?” she laughed in surprise.

“Shouldering this with me. I couldn’t do it all on my own,” he whimpered. “I look at everything that’s happening now and… I can’t believe that I… so much falls on me.”

His contrition was a surprise. Peevishness and irritation had flowed from him many times, but never this sort of tone.

“I know you can’t do it alone,” she said, grasping his hands out of pity. “And I’m happy to be there with you. Always.”