A copy of the letter that Olivia wrote to her husband, which was burned to ash along with his body on the pyre...

My love....

Such simple words, so profound an emotion behind them. As I write those two syllables, in fact, my fingers tremble, my heart threatens to overwhelm.

Lares, how I miss you already.

We were never stinting with our feelings and the expression of them, so I have no regrets that you knew nothing of my feelings or that I withheld the sharing of them. And yet... and yet... within me wells the deepest font of adoration that I want to share with you, as if I have never before expressed what you mean to me. So I write to you this last love letter, my darling, to try to express one last time how I feel. Perhaps, as it rises to the air with you, aloft in ash and smoke, you may carry it with you eternally.

That I love you has always been clear. I pray that you realized the extent to which it was true, is true, for I have cherished you beyond the role of husband in my life. I have valued your friendship, the companionable way we could hold discourse, share a game of chess, sit quietly with our son and simply bask in each other's nearness. I have also admired you as a nobleman, as a businessman, as Princeps. To hear you speak in public was such a secret and great joy for me...oh, how I wither inside knowing I shall never again hear such, know such.

How can I continue?

Even now, I feel the grief building, threatening to overwhelm me in its cyclonic fury. At times I cannot breathe for it, at times I cannot see. I am so lost without you. The concept of living without you is such anguish it does not bear consideration. That my visions of our lives entwined is obliterated with but two years together -- no, not even that -- seems impossible. That our children will grow without knowing their father seems unimaginable. How, how will they ever know about you, my love? How will they ever understand just how much you meant to me, how much you loved them beneath that dignity I likewise adored, so easily did you wear it?

But I will go on, Magnus. I will because you would have it no other way. I will persevere because that is the mettle of which we are made, you and I. But it will never be the same again. Life will never be the same again. And perhaps that is the best way of all to show I loved you and that I know I was loved in return: you changed me, and for the better.

I can never forget. I can never stop loving you. And I shall never fail to look with hope on the day when, blessedly, we are again united. That hope will see me through.

Your love will see me through.

Olivia

The funeral was a day behind them; House Jove was still settled into its formal period of mourning and would for some time, but life was beginning to normalize. To go on. For all, that is, but one.

Sleep had come to Olivia at last, belatedly but truly, as the sun set and cooler air descended on Haven. The burning of Magnus' bier was at least a symbolic release of his lare from here to the afterlife and it, along with her odd outcry at the service, had allowed a certain degree of release from the daze in which she had lived for a week. Thus she had found sleep in the aftermath, in the exhaustion that assailed her once the building tension leading to the funeral had at last departed.

Thus from sunset to midnight she slept atop the coverings on her bed, her infant son Aurelius in the nearby nursery likewise slumbering and guarded by his nurse and one of House Jove's men. She slept dreamlessly, bonelessly, never stirring or altering her position, until the darkest reaches of night. And then, as if a valve had been abruptly twisted and the flow of sleep cut off, she awoke, half-sitting in surprised wakefulness. By habit, in reaction, she moved her hand rightward, where Magnus once had slept... but only empty space met her fingers.

The full brunt of the day's events -- and the anguished memories that were part of them -- weighted down Olivia until the tears flowed anew, fresh and unchecked. As had happened countless times over the past week, the sobs soon followed; violent upheavals of grief that worsened until she felt she could not breathe. In sheer desperation, she pushed herself upright, then to her feet, struggling against the hyperventilation and nausea. Bad for her, bad for the baby.

The baby, in truth, was what kept Olivia going since that night Magnus was murdered. Within her grew a daughter -- the Jovian healer had told her so when visiting a few days earlier, assuring the sickly expectant mother that she and the baby were so far unharmed -- and this knowledge, along with the reality of how much ten-month-old Aurelius would need her, prevented her from expiring sheerly from sorrow. She could not allow herself to fade to nothingness, no matter how great the temptation, while two young lives depended on her.

And now, on her alone.

The night was warm, as so many recent nights had been, and Olivia was restless. To say the least. So, slipping away from the chambers she once had shared with her husband, chambers no longer guarded by Schola since his death and her resignation, she crept in darkest night from the Jovian halls to the cella. This place, of all places, was where in Haven Olivia sought peace and so often found it. With the four statues to the four gods and its serene atmosphere, it was a site she often visited, sometimes daily, to converse with the lare of Cassius Augustin.

Another on whom she could not bear to think; another who perished before his time because of the anger of a powerful mage. Another she had loved.

The loss of Cassius, however, was nothing like this. Oh, she had grieved for him, truly, and more than once she had cried herself to exhaustion on the floor of the cella wishing he were still alive. But Cassius had been guilty of crimes that helped engineer his own demise... unlike Magnus, whose sole transgression seemed to be standing by his sense of honor and duty when a tyrant demanded fealty. He had died for his beliefs, refusing to bend them; no more than she would do, truly, and no less, but cold comfort now all the same.

The cella was empty, of course, for few stirred at this hour of night. Better an empty room than an empty bed, thought the widow as she sank at the feet of the statue of the Kronian, frazzled and frayed in body and soul. Better than a place that still possesses his aura, better than the pillow with a few spare silvery hairs and the scent of him.

Oh, gods... how much I miss him already.

She closed her eyes, sinking further against the marble steps, letting their cool comfort ease her troubled mind and burning features. How, how had the decades she had envisioned for their togetherness, with children and grandchildren and comfortable dotage, been reduced to two years? Two years only... and not even that, no. How had the perfect joy of her life come to be this?

I cannot go on without him. I cannot. Claudius I loved, but his death was natural. Cassius' loss was devastating alone, but this... I never knew pain such as this could exist. I never thought I could feel such despair, such loss. How can one endure when one's heart has been torn asunder?

More feathers, a trio of them, departed Olivia's already sparse wings to flutter to the flooring near her feet. She had never lost feathers before, not when her parents perished, not when she lost her first husband, not even in the aftermath of Cassius' death. Even if her pregnancy were to allow her flight, these grief-shredded, ash-covered wings could never bear her aloft. They were the least of her concern, the last on which she would think: over and over, she heard her husband's dying words, saw his lare depart his shattered body, felt his last breath beneath her cheek, just as all had transpired in that accursed Aegian meeting. The memories convulsed her with renewed anguish... and again the tears flowed. She had been since Magnus' murder a never-ending source for sobs and sorrow.

But this time... this was different.

Another convulsion gripped her, then a third seconds later, stronger than the first. She had before suffered physical manifestations of her emotional pain, yet...

No...!

The baby.

Panic gripped Olivia, she who so rarely felt such an unsettled emotion. Her attempt at rising was blunted by a still-stronger contraction, and below her dressing gown she felt the drenching flow of her water breaking. Not yet, lares, not yet... six weeks remain... no, not my daughter too...!

No pleading, no prayer was heard. No gods rose to aid the mother-to-be, no ancestor intervened. She gritted her teeth, a hollow memory reminding her that the second child came so much faster than the first in most women: there was no time to be wasted, none. But her voice lacked strength to reach outside the cella, let alone to where a Praetor might have heard, and she could not stand, let alone walk for help. The baby was coming, and she was coming now.

Olivia felt split in twain.

Minutes dragged past, blanched by searing agony. She knew nothing but the pangs of delivery, could think of nothing more than to push against the contractions, hear nothing but the roaring in her ears, smell nothing but the rising bile in her throat and the blood pooling around her. The pain was overwhelming, her back spasming repeatedly while her flesh tore from the baby's head demanding an exit. Childbirth was one thing... doing this alone, prematurely, unexpectedly was quite another. The anxiety, fear, and desperation threatened to overwhelm her utterly as she did all she could to protect this helpless product of her shared love with Magnus.

And then... all was at peace.

The pain was numbed, a distant thing of which she was less and less aware; her clawing fingers and curling toes ceased their useless fight against her body's distress, and a sense of calm prevailed. Something within Olivia broke, skittering free to worm into the darkness from which had come to swallow her spirit after Magnus' death. Gone was the loneliness that had eaten away at her, taking with it hopelessness and desolation. A golden warmth suffused her, as if something or someone unseen had blanketed her tormented shape in spring sunshine. All that remained was a sense of brilliant illumination and of expectation. This, she reasoned dimly, must be what greets one at life's end. It was so welcome a relief, so welcome a release. And in celebration and gratitude, she sank down upon the stones and moved no more.

They found her thusly the next day, soaked in her own blood, naked but for the gown she had torn to wind about her hips and between her legs to try to stem the flow of her life's essence, alone but for the tiny form in linen swaddling from her mother's own garment.

But alive. Oh, so very, very much alive.

The newborn was likewise well, small to be certain: born a month early, like her brother, undersized like her brother, but Olivia had no doubts she would come to thrive just as Aurelius had overcome his own difficult arrival in the world. She was named Sperata Beatrice -- she who brings hope and joy -- and she was happily nursing from her weary but elated mother. How remarkable, they said as mother and child were carried back to House Jove, how amazing that Olivia had managed to bear this child alone at night and survive.

To these comments Olivia could only smile feebly, her daughter cradled against her breast, and murmur, "But I was not alone. Not in spirit, never again in spirit. Magnus was with me... and he shall be until I someday am with him."

Serenity was hers once more... and hope.

FIN  

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