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thecapturedafrique · 13 days ago

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This was such a sweet story! 😆 Your prose and their dialogue carries a very poetic feel to it with the descriptions, and like Regina I too am very impressed with lil Liam’s sense of maturity even for his favorite pastry. From the description I’d actually thought Regina liked baklava too, so I was surprised when she didn’t, but I love how this difference of opinions is actually the basis for what allows them to connect: honesty. And that’s such a great central theme for their relationship! 💕

Bedtime Baklava

Book: The Royal Romance

Characters: Prince Liam & Queen Regina (filial)

Rating: G

Summary: In her first few months as Queen, Regina Amaranth bonds with her youngest stepson over an unlikely sweet.

Word Count: 2, 653 words

A/N: Inspired by Regina's "parent advice" in the MC's baby shower in TRH - "Don't let the palace kitchen serve baklava after midnight" . Regina and Constantine have just been married for a few months, and Liam is just a couple months short of turning 12.

Tagging @kingliamappreciationweek and @sazanes for KLAW Day 1: Baklava, and @choicesficwriterscreations for FoTW

For the hundredth time tonight, the newest Queen Consort of Cordonia shifts uncomfortably in her bed - her eyes heavy with the promise of slumber, yet refusing to remain completely shut. As if in defeat, they stop forcing themselves closed, and rest wearily upon the steady, almost-hypnotising rise-and-fall of her husband's chest. It moves in a slow, steady rhythm; a rhythm perfectly matched by the deep, broken rumble of his snores.

Regina sighs heavily, and stifles the very childish urge to bury her ears beneath her pillow. It's been five months now since their wedding. Surely that's enough time to get accustomed to a man's - any man's - oddities and idiosyncracies? Even the ones that disrupt your sleep and force you to consume pill after pill for your morning migraine?

Constantine snores on, blissfully ignorant of the woman glaring in the direction of his half-open mouth. The loud, crackling rattle seems to emerge not so much from his nose as from his chest; so deep is the sound. Most nights, she can manage to drift off into slumber before he does - tonight, she is not that fortunate.

Regina winces; her forehead throbs, in what she knows to be a precursor to a particularly vile, sleep-deprived headache. She grabs her robe and hauls herself, reluctantly, off their bed. If she can just get someplace else, just relieve herself of the sounds of snoring for twenty minutes, she is sure she can salvage this one awful night with at least five hours of sleep.

Gingerly, she ties her robe, feels her toes around for her slippers, then pads her way out the bedroom with a measured softness, still taking furtive glances at the slumbering form of her husband. She runs a nervous hand through her hair, tousled and very unlike the sleek updo she prefers to be seen in, in public, and hopes fervently that no one else is awake. "Carefully rumpled" is more her cousin's style.

The corridor is mercifully dark, except for the thin slivers of light emerging from two rooms.

Regina stands still and keeps her breathing a bit slower, a bit more measured, listening for sounds. Five months and she still feels as much of a stranger here as she did on her wedding night. Part of her wants to believe that it is most likely because she is the sole woman in a family surrounded by males, the one who came into this family when it had already spent several years functioning as a unit (even if a little dysfunctional sometimes) with an altogether different type of woman.

A woman who clearly knew how to work around "her boys", even if they couldn't work with her.

But another part of her wonders if the lack is within her. If it is because - no matter how she and Constantine feel about each other - she could be the right queen but the wrong wife...and, most importantly, the wrong mother for their boys.

Regina faces the first door with narrowed eyes and a pinched mouth, sighing as she strains to ignore the reedy rasp of a rock star's voice and frantic guitar strumming, made faint by the door that blocks any entry into her eldest stepson's most private space. Neither knocking the door nor telling Leo off would change things - if anything, he would snap back with what he believes to be a smart remark, or increase the volume just to get a rise out of her.

Regina shakes her head. It's almost hard to believe that it hadn't always been this way. And depressing to know, that there was a time when the boy seemed to at least try. Murmurs in court from as recently as last year seemed to indicate that while his far-younger brother was clearly better suited to be heir to the throne, Leo was beginning to show a little interest in the role.

Looking at him as a member of this family, Regina wonders now what changed for him so drastically. Yes, the cruel, untimely death of Queen Eleanor would doubtless come to mind - Leo had already lost a mother figure, to lose another at this vulnerable age would have broken anyone - but she is beginning to get the feeling that there may have been more to it than even that devastating loss.

Still...even if that were the case, Regina knows that she would be the last person Leo would want to confide in. He has made no secret of his resentment of her even since her engagement with the King, of his displeasure in having her as part of their family. No compromise, no olive branches, no attempt to reach out to him seems to work.

She cannot blame Leo entirely either. Perhaps, embracing Queen Eleanor and accepting her as his mother had taken up so much of the boy's energy, that he has none left for the woman who has now - unfortunately - taken her place.

Regina shakes her head, moving away from Leo's door. She isn't losing hope, not really, that she will...one day...succeed in changing things between herself and Leo. But she is beginning to sense that she shouldn't hold her breath for that moment either.

Softly, soundlessly, she makes her way across the corridor. She stops midway, at the door of her younger stepson. By the little sliver of light she can just about see from the slightly-ajar door, she can tell young Liam has made a rather appalling attempt at pretending to be asleep. Surreptitiously, she knocks.

A pause. Perhaps he is still weighing his options, still wondering if he can still get away with acting like he is asleep.

Unconsciously, Regina taps out a rhythm with her foot as she waits for Liam to decide. It is ironic how, of the two boys, it is far easier for one to get a read on Leo. What you see is what you receive.

Now Liam...is another kettle of fish. He is a wonderful boy, really - gentle and generous of spirit. He has made all the effort a young teenager could possibly make, to ensure his new mother experienced no distress in her first months here. He has been affable, he has been charming, he has been kind.

But there is a wall. And so far, any attempt to be a mother to him, adds yet another brick to it, making it almost impossible for her to reach him.

Regina genuinely likes Liam, even if she doesn't feel particularly maternal towards either of the boys yet. If she continues to fail with him, Regina will consider that the more crushing failure.

She doesn't knock again, giving Liam the opportunity to decide what he wants. He could wave any questions he gets in the morning, with the excuse that he had forgotten to switch off the lamp in his room. She would be impressed enough with his ability to spin at age eleven, that she'd pretend to believe it.

He does not. He opens the door, fully. Hair tousled, bags under his eyes, not a single wrinkle on his plain blue pajamas. And the look on his face spells - plainly - his intent to not lie to her.

Regina is a tad bit more impressed than she expects to be.

"Not asleep yet?" she asks him lightly, as if it's just 10 PM, and not quarter to 2 in the morning.

Liam's eyes flit from behind Regina to around her to her slippers and the floor - anywhere but her eyes. On closer inspection, she thinks she can spot crumbs of something around his mouth.

When he finally lifts his eyes to her own widened ones, he quickly, and guiltily, covers his mouth, mumbling inaudibly. Biting back a smile, she moves her gaze from his face to a spot behind his shoulder. A spot on his bed where only sheets should be. A spot on his bed...where a small, half-finished golden box of baklava now rests.

Regina's brows raise almost to the level of her hairline. "I thought you liked baklava."

Taken aback, the boy lifts a finger to a corner of his mouth, furtively directing a stray crumb inside, almost as if to savour the honeyed taste he had just enjoyed a minute ago. "I do," he says, hesitantly, "a lot."

She takes a mental inventory of the box. One...two...five and a half pieces left, glistening in the soft light from Liam's bedside lamp. The box itself looks half empty - it came from Istanbul packed with twenty pieces of baklava, five pieces each for four varieties. Walnut, almond, cashewnut and pistachio.

It had been addressed specially to Liam two weeks ago, from Evrim Köse, the Turkish ambassador to Cordonia. And by specially, she means that not another soul but him could lay a hand on those sweets. Which suited the rest of the palace just fine - most of them tended to find such a treat too cloying, too sugary for their tastes.

Regina feigns flicking lint lightly from a few fingers. "I thought you'd have finished that box by now. The last one didn't take you two days!"

Liam tries, and fails, to stifle a giggle. "I really, really wanted to savour it this time."

Intrigued, Regina turns her gaze back to him. It's not every day she hears of an eleven-year-old extol the pleasures of waiting. "What do you mean?"

Slowly, Liam pads his way back to the bed, gingerly touching the box. There's a certain glow of pleasure in his eyes, as he remembers that first exhilarating experience of biting into a baklava in Turkey three months ago. As if he only has to look at the sweet to relive how that one bite nearly changed his life.

"The last time I took a box like this home, I gobbled it up in two days." The two chuckle together at the memory. "It got over so fast. I'd wake up at night craving one more bite and wishing I hadn't hurried up so much, eating it," Liam says, his murmur tinged with slight regret. "This time I promised I'd take my time with it. That lovely little feeling every time I have a taste... I want it to last a little longer."

As he says it, Regina can already see in her mind's eye the way Liam would hold that sweet, carefully, delicately...the way he would chew, slowly...the way he would close his eyes so every available sense would be attuned to the golden glow, to the sweet rosewater scent, to the delicate crunch of forty layers of filo pastry. The way he would prolong this bliss till that was no longer possible.

How long she's spent, attempting to be mother to this boy. Yet how little she - really. truly - knows him.

Almost as if he is reading her thoughts, Liam raises his eyes to the level of hers. He holds a piece out to her.

"No, no," Regina whispers guiltily, wondering if anything on her face could give the impression that she wanted the sweet. "It's all yours. I am not as fond of it as you are."

Neither do his eyes leave hers, nor his hand the baklava. She relents, holding the piece for a moment, her gaze soaking in its heavy, golden perfection. She pops it in like it's candy, then grimaces.

"You don't like it?"

Liam's voice is soft and unnervingly speculative, for a mere boy on the cusp of adolescence. Regina cannot make out from his gaze whether he expects her to feign a liking for the sweet, or be honest with him. Every bit of maternal advice she has heard from noblewomen who used to be her friends - noblewomen who settled into marriage and children far earlier than she did - has recommended appeasement, especially at this delicate stage in a child's development.

One more look into Liam's eyes, and Regina opts not to pretend. Her grimace stays unmoved on her face.

"Too sweet for me," she murmurs back.

On the face of it, Liam's expression seems to remain unchanged. Quiet, watchful, casually moving from her face to the baklava in her hands, and back. But Regina can sense a shift in the air. There is a glimmer in his eyes, some trace of an unspoken need reflected there, that she has unwittingly met. The muscles around his mouth relax more, his stance feels less guarded. He takes out another one, not exactly smiling, but Regina can feel the welcoming sentiment in the gesture regardless.

"This one has walnuts."

Regina smiles. She can't pretend not to be a little touched. "I do like walnuts," she says as she accepts this little treat, grateful not just for what it is but what it represents.

All this time, Regina had focused on being a mother to Liam and Leo. Inwardly cursing herself for not feeling that maternal instinct straightaway (or at all), wondering whether her new sons will resent her for not being mother enough. Especially for Liam, who had just lost his mother two years ago, and who was still too young to fully process that loss.

When all this time, what Liam needed hadn't been another mother at all.

Regina bites into the baklava Liam has offered. It's a tad bit better than the previous one; the walnuts prove a better, slightly more bitter contrast to the sugar syrup...but the latter is still too overpowering for her to ignore. It shows on her face, again; she begins to feel an involuntary pang of regret, then shakes it off.

She isn't sure yet what it is that Liam needs from her. What would strengthen this tentative bond that has blossomed between them tonight. But one thing she does know: whatever their relationship grows to become - a friend, a guide, a mentor - the foundation of it has to be her willingness to be honest with him.

For the rest of their time in the room (twenty minutes at most), Regina is content to merely watch as Liam finishes off the remaining contents of the box. "Anaïs told me I should finish them off now before they start going bad," he explains to her when she remembers his wish to savour the baklava slowly.

Aha! Regina stifles a bubble in her throat that feels suspiciously like laughter. So it's the head chef who has told him where the baklava was kept!

"It's almost two now, Liam," Regina tells him, a frown wrinkling her forehead. "You ought to get some sleep."

Liam appears a little taken aback when he looks at her, perhaps in response to the doubt in her voice. Somehow she highly doubts he will be able to sleep tonight. He's had so much baklava tonight that the ensuing sugar rush would make him too keyed up to sleep at all.

Regina isn't wrong. When Constantine - bright-eyed and alert - casts suspicious glances upon all three members of his family at breakfast time, she knows he has seen the bags beneath all their eyes.

"Has no one gone to bed on time tonight, besides me, Regina?"

Inwardly, Regina bristles. Indeed, it is so easy to sleep soundly in the face of such earth-shattering snores, when you're the one doing the snoring!

Meanwhile, she is conscious of the way their two sons stare at her. Leo's resentful and defiant (although he couldn't possibly know she was outside his door last night), Liam's nervous and hesitant.

"Surely I would have known if they were up all night," Regina feigns a bored drawl, "You know how sensitive I am to noise, darling."

The sigh of relief from the two brothers, once Constantine leaves the dining table, is almost audible. Before Liam leaves for his morning lessons, he rewards her with his biggest smile.

Regina bites back her own, and moves to her study so she can write a note to Chef Anaïs, in anticipation of any future kitchen-related adventures from the youngest prince. It is simple; a single line. Regina has to remind herself to not laugh, even as she passes the note to a member of the palace staff.

Let Prince Liam have baklava at any other time, except midnight. We really can't afford any more midnight sugar rushes at his age.

Notes:

1. The reference to Liam's first experience of baklava comes from this headcanon.

2. This story also hints at Leo's relationship with Eleanor and his secret relationship with a boy named Damien, which is explored to some extent in Eleanor's Kitchen, Chapter 6.

At this point in the story, Constantine has paid the family to leave Cordonia for good, after discovering Leo's romantic relationship with Damien. Leo - who before Eleanor's death was willing to work hard at being a Crown Prince despite not being fit for the role - now has lost all motivation to learn or become Crown Prince after losing both his mother and the boy he loves in the span of months.

#choices fanfic #the royal romance #trr #king liam #queen regina #klaw 3.0 #lizzybeth1986

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