Day forty-two, the journey back to my palace passes in silence heavy with unspoken truths. She sits across from me in the carriage, hands folded precisely in her lap, but her gaze is turned toward the window. Watching the landscape pass with an expression I can't read.
Only when we're back in our own chambers does she finally speak.
"Did you love her? Lyria?"
"She was my sister," I say, the words inadequate for the complexity of that relationship. "I thought I was protecting her."
"But did you love her?"
I consider the question seriously, trying to separate protective instinct from genuine affection. "I loved who I thought she should be. Not who she was."
"And me?" She turns to face me fully, and I see something in her eyes that might be hope. "Do you love who I am? Or who you made me to be?"
The question cuts to the heart of everything that's been troubling me since her transformation completed. The growing sense that victory tastes like defeat, that perfect submission feels hollow.
"I don't know," I admit finally. "I loved who you were before. The fire, the defiance, the way you challenged everything I believed. But I destroyed all of that to create this."
She nods slowly, as if my answer confirms something she already suspected. "Your brother told me something else. About the prophecy."
"What about it?"
"That it requires willing bonds. Hearts freely given." She touches the claiming bite at her throat, fingers tracing the scar that marks her as mine. "But I didn't give my heart freely, did I? You took it piece by piece until I had nothing left to give."
The truth of her words settles between us like a physical weight. The prophecy is failing because what I created isn't love—it's elaborate conditioning masquerading as devotion.
"I can't undo what I've done," I tell her, meaning it completely. "The bond, the transformation, the conditioning—it's all permanent."
"I know." She moves closer, and for the first time in weeks, her approach doesn't feel like programmed behavior. "Butmaybe we can build something real on top of what's broken. Maybe choice can grow even in the cage you built."
"How?"
She considers this, her brilliant mind working through possibilities with the same analytical precision she once applied to political theory. "Give me something to choose. Not whether to serve you—we both know I can't survive without that. But how to serve. Why to serve. Let me find meaning in what I've become instead of just going through the motions."
It's not freedom. Can never be freedom, not with the bond ensuring her survival depends on my continued presence. But it's agency within constraint, purpose within compulsion.
"And if I can't? If I fall back into old patterns of control?"
"Then we'll be Lyria's story all over again," she says simply. "Just slower."
The weight of choice—real choice—settles over both of us. Not whether she'll stay, but how we'll learn to live with what I've made of us both.
"I want to try," I tell her. "To love who you are instead of what I made you to be."
"Then we'll try," she agrees. "Together."
It's not forgiveness. Not absolution for the choices that brought us here. But it's the first honest conversation we've had since her transformation began, and something in my chest loosens at the possibility of building something real from the wreckage of what I destroyed.
The ice sculptures in the courtyard have stopped dancing. The palace itself feels cold in ways that have nothing to do with temperature. Magic knows when bonds are broken, even if they still technically exist.
Outside our window, snow begins to fall—not the harsh blizzard that claimed Lyria, but soft flakes that speak of new beginnings.
Maybe it's not too late to choose differently.
Maybe choice can bloom even in winter.
For the first time in six centuries, I question whether perfect conditioning creates anything worth having. Watching her complete evening tasks with mechanical precision, eyes empty of the spark that once defined her, I realize the prophecy requires willing bonds—and I haven't created a partner.
I've created a beautiful corpse that still moves.
