Once Upon a Time (Calluvia's Royalty 3)

Chapter 4

“Darling, may I come in?”

Jamil flinched and hastily straightened in his chair. “Mother,” he said with a faint smile, hoping his mother didn’t see him staring into nothing instead of working. “Of course you may. You don’t have to ask.”

Queen Janesh of the Third Grand Clan smiled at him and glided into his office. She was a tall, graceful woman, still splendidly beautiful despite her age. All three of her children had taken after her, inheriting her impeccable bone structure and green eyes. Jamil’s younger brother looked like her the most, down to her silver-white hair, while Jamil had inherited the Queen’s height and full lips. Their sister, Gynesh, looked more like the Queen-Consort than the Queen, but she had the Queen’s grace.

“Am I interrupting?” his mother said, glancing at the reports in front of him.

“It’s nothing that can’t wait,” Jamil said, trying to gauge why his mother was here. Although they lived under the same roof, his mothers lived in another wing of the palace and didn’t like constricting their children’s freedom in any way. Jamil couldn’t remember the last time the Queen had come to his office; he usually went to hers. “Is something the matter?”

Queen Janesh sat down and studied him. “How are you, Jamil?”

He looked at his hands, at the black mourning bracelet on his left wrist. “I’m well, Mother. Is something the matter?”

The Queen was silent for a long moment. He could feel her gaze on him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

“I didn’t want to broach this subject,” she said at last. “But my advisers have been bringing it up lately, and I couldn’t continue putting it off without making you appear unfit to rule.”

Jamil stiffened, his gaze snapping to his mother’s, green meeting green. “What are you talking about, Your Majesty?” Clearly she was here in her official capacity.

Queen Janesh sighed. “It has been brought to my attention that our line of succession is in danger while you don’t have an heir.”

Jamil swallowed.

He couldn’t say he was surprised. He had been expecting this conversation for some time.

As the Crown Prince, one of his duties was providing the throne with the heir, a duty he still hadn’t fulfilled. The Queen was thankfully in perfect health, but it was natural that their people would start worrying that there was a danger to the line of succession. Jamil might have a younger sister and brother, but neither of them could ascend to the throne if something happened to Jamil: his sister, Gynesh, was going to marry the King of the Eighth Grand Clan later this year, while his younger brother Seyn was betrothed to the Crown Prince of the Second Grand Clan. Since the law prohibited the same person to be a consort of a monarch and another grand clan’s monarch, Jamil couldn’t count on his younger siblings to continue the line of succession. The responsibility of providing the heir lay entirely on him.

Except he was a widower, and in their society, widowers didn’t remarry. Normally, even being a widower wouldn’t be a problem: it was custom for members of the royal family to use their late spouse’s preserved genetic material to have an heir if there was none. Jamil could have used Mehmer’s preserved sperm—and his own—to create the much needed heir in any of the numerous genetic centers of the planet. After all, artificial wombs had been invented for a reason.

The problem was, Mehmer had never bothered to preserve his genetic material.

“I’m afraid it isn’t possible, Mother,” Jamil said, folding his hands on his lap and clenching them where his mother couldn’t see. The subject was still… rather painful. Just months ago, he and Mehmer had been talking about it, finally ready for a child. Just months ago, Mehmer had still been alive.

The Queen’s elegant brows furrowed. “Darling,” she said gently. “I know your husband is gone, but you can still have his child—”

“I can’t,” Jamil said. “You know how he was. He didn’t like the idea of making a baby in a lab. We were going to…” He bit his lip, blushing slightly. No matter how old he was, it was still awkward as hell to talk about sex with his mother. How could he tell the Queen that Mehmer had liked the idea of making a child—gathering their sperm—during actual sex instead of just masturbating into a lab container?

Thankfully, the Queen seemed to understand what he couldn’t say.

“Oh,” she said faintly, frowning. “That’s something of a handicap, I admit.”

Jamil stared at her incredulously. “Something of a handicap?”

Queen Janesh looked at him steadily. “You can still have a child with another man. If we can find a man willing to donate his genetic material, no one has to know that the baby isn’t your husband’s.”

Speechless, Jamil opened his mouth and closed it. What his mother was proposing seemed… unthinkable. He didn’t want a child with some stranger.